The Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs claims that Russia has used the “Iskander/SS-26”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iskander missile on non-military targets at some point in the last week. “See this press release”:http://www.police.ge/en/curview.aspx?newsid=31665&categoryid=1.

In addition, there are also reports on the Georgian telly (citing an MIA spokesman) that the Russians used missiles with a range of “approximately 500 km” and that the missiles were “dropped on the [towns of] Gori, Poti and [targeted at?] the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.”

For the time being, there are pictures “available at the Georgian MIA site”:http://www.police.ge/en/curview.aspx?newsid=31665&categoryid=1. There is too many for me to link to at the moment. But here is a sample.

!/images/55.jpg!

I felt _quite reluctant_ linking to this and I am not quite sure what to make of the story. The Iskander’s range is clearly not quite 500 km, so that’s an exaggeration. Moreover, to my yet untrained eye, it seems that the pictures (if you look at the whole collection) may be showing a whole range of systems instead of just one.

*The denial issued by the Russian Armed Forces*, dated Saturday, is “here in Russian”:http://www.mil.ru/info/1069/details/index.shtml?id=49537.

*Update:* See ACW for the “_Where’s the Iskander?_ picture challenge”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1998/did-russia-fire-ss-26s-at-georgia.