Azernews.Az

TBILISI – Georgia said Friday it has dismantled a major Russian spy ring and arrested 13 suspects including four Russian citizens, outraging Moscow two years after the two countries fought a brief war, AFP reported.

Georgian interior ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said the suspects, who included Georgian military officers, had been providing secret information on Georgia's military to the Russian military's foreign intelligence service, the GRU.

"This is a huge deal in terms of Georgia securing its military intelligence and a big blow to the GRU," Utiashvili told AFP, adding that Georgian security services had managed to infiltrate the spy ring.

Georgia and Russia fought a brief war in August 2008 that saw Russian forces pour into the country to repel a Georgian military attempt to retake the Moscow-backed rebel region of South Ossetia.

Russia immediately denounced the arrests, with a foreign ministry source saying Moscow was "deeply angered".

The source told the Interfax news agency that the arrests were an attempt to damage Russia's reputation ahead of a NATO summit in Lisbon on November 19-20 to be attended by President Dmitry Medvedev.

"We are deeply angered by the reports about the arrests of Russian citizens in Georgia and we are currently studying the situation," the source said.

"This is a provocation showing another worsening of the anti-Russian psychosis of the Georgian leadership," said the diplomat, who was not named.

Tensions between the two neighbours had been growing for years in the run-up to the war, including after the 2006 arrest of four Russian military officers on espionage charges. The four were eventually released and returned to Russia.

Media reports of the arrests surfaced last week but officials had refused to comment until Friday, which coincides with an annual day in Russia celebrating its military intelligence service.

In a statement, the interior ministry said it had conducted "a major operation which uncovered several dozen people working covertly" for the GRU and listed the 13 people charged with espionage as a result of the investigation.

It said Georgian security services had "implanted a former Soviet Army officer into the GRU" who was able to obtain computer hardware and software that allowed Tbilisi to decipher GRU encryption codes and expose the spy ring.

Utiashvili said the spy ring was centred on Georgia's Black Sea region of Adjara, a former Moscow-backed rebel province that Tbilisi regained control of in 2004.

He said the Georgian suspects had passed information on "military orders, the state of readiness and points of deployment" to Russian GRU operatives, including during the 2008 war.

He said the Georgian security operative who had infiltrated the spy ring had obtained "encryption, decryption and security codes" that are regularly used by the GRU.