News
Email
Print
Russians leave positions deep in Georgia
Pullout not complete, 'buffer zones' not agreed to, U.S. says
AP Photo
A convoy of Russian armored vehicles heads toward the Abkhazia border.
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: August 23, 2008
GORI, Georgia
Columns of smoke-belching Russian tanks rolled out of key positions deep inside Georgia yesterday, as Moscow declared it had pulled its forces out after the worst confrontation between the Kremlin and the West since the Soviet collapse. But the United States, France and Britain said that the withdrawal was incomplete.
Georgians exulted in a new sense of freedom as the Russian troops left.
Near Igoeti, the closest Russians got to the capital of Tbilisi, Georgian police in a convoy of cars and pickups pumped their fists and waved national flags as they trailed behind two Russian tanks leaving ahead of them.
"How can we not be happy? We've gotten what we want," said Levan, a math teacher in the strategically situated central city of Gori, farther up Georgia's main east-west highway, who would give only his first name. "We're overjoyed to see our own police on our streets again."
What may have been the last convoy of Russian armored vehicles left Gori shortly after 5 p.m. yesterday. The six vehicles drove off after soldiers fired at a disabled armored personnel carrier, perhaps to disable any working equipment left behind.
A few hours later, Gori was empty of Russian forces.
"We are in control of the streets of the city of Gori," Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili said outside City Hall.
The withdrawal came two weeks to the day after thousands of Russian soldiers moved into the former Soviet republic after an assault by Georgian forces on the capital of the separatist territory of South Ossetia. The conflict left hundreds dead, cities destroyed and nearly 160,000 people homeless.
Russian columns left Georgia's western Senaki military base, Gori and Igoeti, just 30 miles from Tbilisi.
But soldiers and armored personnel carriers stayed put in at least three positions near Senaki and the Black Sea port city of Poti, raising questions about Russia's intentions.
The Russians said they were creating so-called security zones extending into Georgian territory to prevent future attacks.
President Bush, vacationing at his ranch in Texas, conferred with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and "the two agreed that Russia is not in compliance and that Russia needs to come into compliance now," said a White House spokesman, Gordon Johndroe.
"Compliance means compliance with that plan," Johndroe said. "We haven't seen that yet. It's my understanding that they have not completely withdrawn from areas considered undisputed territory, and they need to do that."
The Russians "have without a doubt failed to live up to their obligations," a spokesman for the State Department, Robert Wood, said in Washington. "Establishing checkpoints, buffer zones, are definitely not part of the agreement."
Georgia's state minister on reintegration, Temur Yakobashvili, said that the formation of a buffer zone outside South Ossetia "is absolutely illegal."
In South Ossetia, Russian forces erected 18 "peacekeeping posts" in a so-called security zone around its border with Georgia. Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy head of Russia's general staff, said yesterday that peacekeepers would establish another 18 posts around Abkhazia.
A total of 2,142 Russian peacekeepers will be deployed on Abkhazia's de facto border, and 452 will man the South Ossetia de facto border, Nogovitsyn said.
In Moscow, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said that the pullback into South Ossetia was finished late yesterday.
In western Georgia, a column of 83 Russian tanks, armored personnel carriers and trucks pulling artillery drove north from the Senaki military base toward the breakaway Abkhazia region along the Black Sea coast yesterday afternoon.
Email
Print
