134th IPRM Meeting Held in Ergneti

The 134th meeting of the Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism (IPRM) took place on September 8 in the village of Ergneti, near the occupation line in Georgia’s Russia-occupied Tskhinvali region. The meeting, which brought together the representatives of Georgia’s central government and de facto authorities of Tskhinvali/South Ossetia, was co-facilitated by Bettina Patricia Boughani, Head of the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia (EUMM), and Christoph Späti, Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for the South Caucasus. During the meeting, Tbilisi again raised the issues of illegal detentions and so-called borderization, as well as the need to hold accountable those responsible for the killing of Georgian citizen Tamaz Ginturi.

Representatives of Tskhinvali’s de facto authorities, meanwhile, again called for the removal of the Chorchana/Tsnelisi police checkpoint and raised concerns about the well-being of Tamaz Goloev, a Tskhinvali resident currently in custody in Georgia proper on espionage allegations. The next IPRM meeting is set to take place on October 22. The Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism ( IPRM ) was established in 2009 within the framework of the Geneva International Discussions that followed the 2008 Russo-Georgian war. It serves as a forum for the regular discussion of security-related incidents and developments on the ground. IPRM meetings have been held regularly in Ergneti, near the Tskhinvali occupation line, with the participation of representatives from Tbilisi and the Tskhinvali de facto authorities. In contrast, meetings in Gali, in occupied Abkhazia, have been suspended multiple times, from 2012 to 2016, and again since 2018. The meetings are co-facilitated by the OSCE and the European Union Monitoring Mission in…