Russian Foreign Ministry accused Tbilisi of fanning “propagandistic hysteria” over ‘borderisation’ process across breakaway South Ossetia’s administrative boundary line and warned that “political speculation” over the issue is “fraught with serious consequences.”

It said that the issue was raised during a phone conversation on September 23 between Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin and EU's special representative for South Caucasus, Philippe Lefort, who is also a co-chair of the Geneva international discussions.

“Attention of the EU special representative was drawn to the intensified provocative activities of Tbilisi in the border area with the South Ossetia. Propagandistic hysteria is being fanned around absolutely legitimate actions of the authorities in Tskhinval to reinforce border regime of their state borders,” reads the Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement.

“False claims are knowingly disseminated about alleged shift of the border line deeper into the Georgian territory. The Georgian police is directly involved in organizing ‘protest rallies of local population’ with consequent biased coverage by the media as it happened, for example, on September 17 close to the village of Ditsi. Noise has been stirred recently around [borderisation] measures in the area of the village of Dvani,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also said it’s clear that the borderisation process causes rejection by Tbilisi, which “is not ready to admit irreversibility of consequences of criminal military adventurism of M.Saakashvili in August 2008.”

“But deliberately fueling emotions, political speculation over this issue is unacceptable,” it continued. “It is fraught with serious consequences for the regional stability.”

“The Russian side has expressed hope that EU’s special representative and the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia will restrain the authorities in Tbilisi from irresponsible steps in the border areas, especially in the condition of ongoing pre-election campaign in the country,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said, adding that the issue should be discussed “constructively and calmly” in frames of the Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism.

In a written statement on September 24 – the second one on the issue in a week, the Georgian Foreign Ministry said that it condemns “illegal actions of the Russian occupying forces across the occupation line in the Tskhinvali region”, which, it said, grossly violates international norms and has extremely negative impact on daily livelihood of the local population.