TBILISI, July 25 – Georgia has opened a sabotage investigation after two nationwide power failures struck on consecutive days, while Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili called the repeated shutdowns an “unusual event”.
The State Security Service said Saturday that it had launched the investigation following emergency electricity cuts across the country on July 24 and July 25.
The investigation is conducted on the basis of an article of the criminal code covering interference with or damage to a state enterprise or another important facility with the aim of threatening Georgia’s state interests.
The agency has not said that sabotage has been established. It has not named any suspect or identified any deliberate action behind the outages.
Papuashvili said the investigation should determine whether the failures involved human error, outside interference or an act resembling sabotage.
“It is important to investigate and establish what we were dealing with,” he said. “The fact is, it was an unusual event. The entire system shut down on consecutive occasions.”
He added that all details should be examined and said any human factor, interference or sabotage-related action should be uncovered.
Georgia suffered its first nationwide blackout shortly after midnight on Friday, July 24. Electricity was gradually restored during the morning.
A second major outage followed at around 08:00 on Saturday. Georgia’s State Electrosystem said power had been fully restored nationwide by 10:15 and that the cause was still being investigated.
Levan Mebonia, director of the Enguri hydropower plant, said Saturday’s failure followed the shutdown of the 500-kV Imereti transmission line. He said the line had been carrying a heavy load, and that its failure disrupted the system and caused the wider grid to collapse.
