“The Russians wanted to check the information … so the deputy to Borisov called the European Union monitoring mission in Georgia and offered help with the casualties after the explosion on the railway which never exploded,” Mr. Utiashvili said. “The European Union mission told us this.” ~The Washington Times

Joshua Kucera points out that the EU mission quickly distanced itself from this specific claim when the Georgian authorities made it late last year. According to this December 2010 report, the mission cannot confirm the claim:

EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia (EUMM) said that “contrary to recent press reports” it was not in a position to confirm or deny the claims of Russian involvement in any of the explosions that occurred in Georgia in recent few months.

“The Mission has not conducted an investigation into these events as it is not in its mandate to do so,” EUMM said in a statement on December 9.

Georgia’s evidence, through which Tbilisi claims that an Abkhazia-based Russian army officer was behind series of explosions and one failed blast attempt, include, among others, an inquiry made by Russian forces in Abkhazia via hotline asking EUMM about explosion, which never happened.

So what we appear to have here is a Georgian official flat-out lying to Lake about the EU mission’s evidence in this case.

Kucera asks the logical questions:

A bigger question should be, why would Russia do this? What do they have to gain from setting off a bomb at the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi? Reasonable people can doubt Russia’s intentions toward the U.S. and Georgia, but this sort of terror action would be extraordinarily self-defeating.