Georgia asks Viber to remove Abkhazia and South Ossetia from list of countries

Popular messaging app Viber has removed Georgia’s breakaway regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia from its list of countries where users can make calls.

This move came after Georgia’s Foreign Ministry contacted the Viber office in Cyprus and asked the management team to remove the two Georgian regions from its list of independent countries.

Viber complied and both of the Georgian regions were removed from the Viber Out service.

"At this moment negotiations are underway with Viber’s headquarters in Israel with the aim to remove the occupied regions of Georgia from the app,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mari Narchemashvili.

Viber allows users to send free text messages, fun stickers, photos, videos and doodles, share locations, make free calls and communicate with Push-To-Talk. With Viber Out, users can make calls to any phone number around the world. The app has almost 600 million users worldwide.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia were listed among the countries where people could use the app.

These two regions are Georgian territories that are currently are occupied by Russia. Tbilisi has no control over them and they have their own de facto governments that are supported by Russia.

The global community recognise Abkhazia and South Ossetia as part of Georgia. (Agenda.ge)