Roskosmos chief denies Russian space junk falling on Abkhazia.

MOSCOW, August 28 (Itar-Tass) - Russia has nothing to do with the possible incident with a fragment of space junk that allegedly fell onto the territory of Abkhazia on August 23, head of the Federal Space Agency /Roskosmos/ Anatoly Perminov told Mayak radio on Tuesday.

"This information is incorrect. We're closely watching all the major delivery vehicles and descent of all spacecraft, especially large ones. There were no Russian spacecraft in that area," Perminov said.

"We have an outer space control system in Russia; together with the Ministry of Defense we monitor all orbiting units. As of today, we monitor more than 6,000 spacecraft at altitudes of up to 40,000 kilometers. None of these units monitored by Russia have fallen within the boundaries of the territories of the Black Sea coast, Abkahzia or Georgia," he told Vesti television program.

"There're another 4,000 space objects we do not control. This variant / their falling in the designated area/ is possible. I don't see any guilt of Roskosmos or the Ministry of Defense in this event," Perminov underlined.

A report from Sukhumi on Monday said fragments of a de-orbiting spacecraft had fallen onto the territory of Abkhazia. This conclusion was drawn by the self-proclaimed republic's state environment service after the questioning of eyewitnesses and an analysis of the trajectory and size of the spacecraft.

Head of this department Roman Dbara said a space object was sighted over the Black Sea at 21:35, Moscow time, on August 23. It entered dense layers of the atmosphere, caught fire and defragmented. Larger chunks fell in the area of the Main Caucasus Ridge, while smaller parts burnt down in the atmosphere.

Scientists believe these fragments were parts of de-orbiting "space junk."