Reports indicate Russia is slow to pull back from Georgia
The Russian military says the process has begun, but Georgia's government says Russians had reentered some positions in western Georgia.
TBILSI, Georgia -- The Russian military said today it had begun to pull back troops that it had marched into the nation of Georgia last week, but witnesses and news reports indicated that at least initially little had changed on the ground.
U.S. and Georgian officials said they had detected scant evidence that Russia has begun moving out of Georgia proper the troops that entered following a confrontation that flared Aug. 7 in the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tbilisi said the Russian had reentered some military positions in western Georgia and allegedly installed land mines on bridges near key cities in central and western Georgia. An official of the pro-Moscow government in South Ossetia, however, said Russian troops in Georgia had begun to pull back but couldn't say when they would be out.
In Moscow, Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy head of Russia's General Staff, told reporters at a regular briefing that Russian forces have started the process of leaving Georgia proper as part of a French-backed cease-fire deal signed over the weekend by both Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
"The pullout of peacekeeping forces started today," Nogovitsyn said, according to the Associated Press. "Once we understood that no threat was perceived out of there [in the key central Georgia city of Gori], "we started withdrawing troops from today."
But he immediately hedged his statement.
"I would like to distinguish two notions: the notion of withdrawal and that of pullout," he said. "So in a telephone conversation between our president and French President [Nicolas] Sarkozy, they spoke only about the pullout. I hope you notice the subtlety. We are not talking about withdrawal here."
In Washington, a Pentagon official said the U.S. had not seen signs of significant movement by Russian troops.
"There is no indication to us that they have begun to pull back," said the official. "We see no evidence of a rush to withdrawal."
The official was not authorized to discuss the U.S. assessment of the Russian military moves and requested anonymity.
Russians have interpreted the cease-fire deal to mean that they must only remove troops from undisputed parts of Georgia, but can keep them in South Ossetia and a murky security zone outside the breakaway republic, as well as in Abkhazia, another Georgia region seeking independence. Western officials have said the accord calls for the withdrawal of all additional troops sent into the regions and Georgia proper after Aug. 7, leaving in place only Russian peacekeepers already stationed in the two breakaway areas.
