NATO Monitors Georgia Missile Strike, Has Not Been Asked to Investigate

NATO ambassadors from all 26 member nations met in Brussels on 8 August 2007 to assess an unexplained missile strike on Georgian territory. The alliance confirmed it was watching events closely but said Georgia had made no formal request for NATO involvement in any international inquiry.

Tbilisi attributed the strike to Moscow and called it a deliberate act against a sovereign state. Russia flatly rejected the accusation, arguing instead that a Georgian aircraft had carried out the incident as a staged provocation.

International peacekeepers in South Ossetia, a breakaway Georgian region largely controlled by pro-Russian forces, spent a second consecutive day examining the crater left by the unexploded missile.

Russian media called on NATO allies, specifically Türkiye and the United States, to review their surveillance data to establish the missile's origin. Georgia, a former Soviet republic pursuing NATO membership at the time, framed the incident as part of its deteriorating relationship with Moscow.

Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in August 2007, in its own words.