Lieutenant Colonels Alexander Baranov and Alexei Zavgorodny, who were released along with two other officers in the South Caucasus state Monday, said they had only arrived in Batumi in western Georgia to oversee the withdrawal of a Soviet-era base September 8 and simply could not have become involved in any terrorist and spying activities in such a short period of time.
They said they had been treated decently in custody, but Georgian military officers had "disgraced" themselves with insults, the paper said.
Zavgorodny told Izvestia that he had initially been placed in a cell with bloodstained mattresses and an inscription on the wall "[President Mikheil] Saakashvili is a fascist," but conditions for both of them had improved after officials from the Russian Embassy visited them.
Asked whether they were linked to the intelligence service, the officers said concisely: "Issues concerning military service are qualified as a state and military secret."
Zavgorodny, who arrived in Georgia with his wife and one-year-old daughter, said he had been arrested in a shop.
"I did not have time to see what was on sale, when two men approached me, handcuffed me and read out espionage charges," the officer told the newspaper, suggesting his arrest had been planned somewhere else as he had stopped the car to enter the shop unexpectedly. He repeated an accusation that his driver had been assaulted.
Baranov was arrested at home. Police broke into his apartment and put a gun against his head in front of his family. But the officer said he was unharmed during the arrest, the newspaper reported.
They said the evidence furnished by Georgia's military would not have survived the first court proceedings.
"If the case lived until the start of a court trial, it would have collapsed," Zavgorodny said in the interview. "All of us go to cafes, meet with people, drink beer... Is this compromising?"
The Georgian Interior Ministry circulated audio and video recordings last week showing, among other things, the arrested officers meeting with Georgians and giving them money allegedly for intelligence on Georgian troops' movements.
The officers said their transfer to representatives of the 55-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Tbilisi Monday was conducted with too much pomp and police presence. Zavgorodny said "the comedy" with one male and one female police officer flanking each arrestee was intended for the international security organization, the daily reported.
"I said to the driver: 'There are so many police it's like I'm Jack the Ripper,'" Zavgorodny told the paper.
He said his wife and daughter were still in Batumi waiting to be evacuated and added he hoped they were safe.
Russia evacuated most embassy staff and almost all family members from Georgia over safety concerns as the dispute deepened, with the two countries trading accusations, and Russia imposing travel and postal bans and threatening further measures.
Russia dismissed the spying charges from the start, saying the arrested officers had been engaged in the withdrawal of the two military bases from the former Soviet republic.
The Russian bases have long been an irritant for Georgia, which has sought NATO membership since Western-leaning President Mikheil Saakashvili came to power in late 2003 and accused Russia of interfering into its domestic affairs. Georgia will hold local elections in a few days' time.
