118
POTI, Georgia — Russian forces dug trenches and built fortifications in key areas of Georgia on Thursday, but also rolled columns of tanks north toward home, picking and choosing how their country would comply with the terms of a peace accord.
A top Russian general said it could be more than 10 days before the bulk of the troops return to Russia.
Although President Dmitry Medvedev has promised that his forces would pull back as far as separatist Ossetia and a surrounding zone by Friday, Russian troops appeared to be in no hurry — even settling down in strategic spots. This raised concerns about whether Moscow was aiming for a lengthy occupation of its smaller, pro-western neighbour.
An European Union-sponsored ceasefire requires both Russian and Georgian forces to move back to positions held before fighting broke out Aug. 7 in Georgia's separatist republic of South Ossetia, which has close ties to Russia. The Russians are allowed to remain in zones around Georgia's borders with South Ossetia and another separatist region, Abkhazia.
Related Articles
The war in Georgia, a small country straining to escape Moscow's influence, has sent tensions between Moscow and the West to the highest levels since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.
NATO, Russia's Cold War foe, said it had received a note from Moscow announcing that Russia is halting military co-operation with the transatlantic alliance.
On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Polish counterpart signed a deal to build an American missile defence base in Poland after a top Russian general warned last week that Poland was risking an attack, possibly a nuclear one, by developing the base.
Russian forces took up positions Thursday at the entrance to Georgia's main Black Sea port city of Poti, excavating trenches, setting up mortars and blocking a key bridge with armoured personnel carriers and trucks. Another group of APCs and trucks were positioned in a wooded area nearby.
“The pullback of Russian forces is taking place at such a tempo that by the end of Aug. 22, they will be in the zones of responsibility of Russian peacekeepers,” Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy head of the general staff, said at a briefing in Moscow.
But the commander of Russia's land forces, General Vladimir Boldyrev, said Thursday that checkpoints in the security zones would be up and running Friday and that forces not involved in that effort would head back to Russia — but that it would take about 10 days after that for them to get there, moving “in columns in the established order.”
An Associated Press cameraman was threatened by armed Russian troops near Poti, who stripped his video from his camera.
Russian troops also controlled the central Georgian city of Gori and the village of Igoeti, about 50 kilometres west of the capital of Tbilisi. Both are along Georgia's main east-west highway.
Russian soldiers were digging permanent structures, building high earthen berms and stringing barbed wire in at least three spots on the road between Gori and Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital.
Some Russian troops and military vehicles were on the move, including 21 tanks an AP reporter saw heading toward Russia from inside South Ossetia. Columns of heavy weaponry — including tanks, armoured personnel carriers and trucks — were also seen moving in both directions on the road from Gori to Tskhinvali.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner hailed the report of tank movements as a positive step.
“We are waiting ... for the Russians to respect their word,” Mr. Kouchner told reporters in Paris. “We waited twice with dashed hopes. This time, it appears that there is at least the beginning of a fulfilment.”
But in Washington, Defence Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said the moves appeared to be cosmetic.
“There has not been much evidence of any significant Russian withdrawals. There have been what I would call some minimal movements to date,” he said.
Outside Tskhinvali, several ethnic-Georgian villages were burning — many days after fighting had ended — and bore evidence of destruction from looting. Some Ossetians in the area said they were not prepared to live side-by-side with Georgians any more.
“It's not they, it's we who will erase them from the face of earth,” said Alan Didurov, 46.
The EU agreement says Russian forces can withdraw to a so-called “security zone” that extends seven kilometres into Georgia from South Ossetia.
Russian forces are also allowed a presence on Georgian territory in a security zone along the border with Abkhazia, another separatist Georgian region, under a 1994 UN-approved agreement that ended a war there. But Poti is about 30 kilometres south of Abkhazia and lies well outside the security zone. It is also at least 150 kilometres west of the nearest point in South Ossetia.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said late Wednesday that Russia was seizing strategic spots in Georgia even as it thinned out troops elsewhere. He called the Russian moves “some kind of deception game.”
Port and city officials say Poti has been looted by the Russians over the past week, and Russian forces carried tables and chairs out on armoured personnel carriers Thursday, while residents protested against Russia's continued grip on the country.
