The defense ministry of Georgia will supply weapons, live ammunition and explosives to a TV channel run by the rap-artist—son, Bera Ivanishvili, of former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, the Georgian government’s alleged éminence grise.

The list of supplies includes TNT, detonators, gunpowder, machine-guns and ammunition-belts. Out of these, the defense ministry would like the machine-guns and ammunition-belts back at some point.

The TV station, GDS, does not plan to start a war. It says it needs the weaponry for two historic drama series (“Tiflis” and “Lost Heroes”). But the news raises potentially explosive questions about the conditions for the deal.

Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili, who authorized the handover, formerly served as the director of Bera Ivanishvili’s production company, Georgian Dream, Ltd,. His April-24 order for the transaction no longer appears to be accessible online.

In an interview with Liberali Magazine, "Lost Heroes" producer Davit Kelekhsashvili claimed that GDS paid the defense ministry for the supplies, but would not specify the amount.

This is not, though, the first time the defense ministry has doubled as the Ministry of Special Effects for people of power. Under former President Mikheil Saakashvili, the armed forces provided equipment for "5 Days of War" (also billed as "5 Days of August"), a Hollywood action-thriller about the 2008 Georgian-Russian conflict largely financed by the influential, pro-Saakashvili MP Koba Nakopia.

The “flaring firecracker of a film,” as The New York Times put it, ran heavy on chaotic explosions and gunfire, with “no sense of strategy,” noted American movie critic Roger Ebert.

Remembering that, many in this sometimes-trigger-happy country are concerned about the safety of the GDS projects. Kelekhsashvili said, though, that the defense ministry will provide instructors to help the film crews figure out their new props. The shells, at least, are going to be blank.

Gharibashvili has not elaborated about his reasons for authorizing GDS' use of the armed forces' materiel. But, in Georgia's culture of clan-based politics, the 32-year-old prime minister, whom Bidzina Ivanishvili hand-picked as his replacement in 2013, probably would not refuse his former (or some say still current) boss’s son the props his TV station needs.

The defense-ministry-armed TV shows will not be dedicated to modern-day politics, but GDS also airs the elder Ivanishvili’s current-affairs talk-show and plans to air dramas about the evils of ex-President Saakashvili’s rule.

No doubt the defense ministry, if asked, will provide all the firepower such projects may need.