rpfan2008
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Despite claims of pullback
Source: 01 McClatchy
Source 02: Guardian UK
Source: 01 McClatchy
IGOETI, Georgia — Despite assurances that it would withdraw troops from Georgia starting Monday, the Russian military operated with impunity as its forces moved convoys in and out of the city of Gori and plowed through a police roadblock in this town some 25 miles northwest of Tbilisi, the capital.
In Washington, senior defense officials cited "troubling" intelligence that Russia had set up short-range ballistic missile launchers in South Ossetia. The SS-21 missiles have a range of 40 to 70 miles, meaning they can reach the capital from practically any part of South Ossetia, which Russian forces now occupy.
The officials, who refused to be identified due to the sensitivity of the subject, also said there was no significant Russian movement out of Georgia.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday the United States and its allies will not allow Russia to gain a strategic victory in Georgia. She also warned Russia that it is playing a "very dangerous game" by resuming Cold War-era strategic bomber patrols off the Alaskan coast. Rice was en route to an emergency meeting of NATO on the Georgia crisis.
The United States, which has refused to send direct military aid to Georgia, continued providing what officials said were humanitarian supplies. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said three C-17's and one C-9 transport planes flew to Georgia Monday, and as of Tuesday, there will be a daily flight of a C-17 cargo plane.
The deputy head of the Russian military's general staff, Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, told reporters in Moscow Monday that Russian troops were being drawn back to the breakaway region of South Ossetia, which sits just on the Georgia-Russia border.
McClatchy journalists working in both the west and center of the country saw little to indicate that was happening. As has been the case throughout the 10-day conflict - which began with a Georgian military move into South Ossetia - Russian commanders seemed intent on showing they controlled the ground.
Russian forces dominated the country's vital road and rail arteries, held military bases they had seized from the Georgian army, and occupied Gori, a strategically important city and the birthplace of the late Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
Military convoys continued to move in and out of Gori all afternoon, including tanks and an anti-aircraft gun. The day before, dozens of Russian supply trucks were seen driving from the direction of South Ossetia into the city.
The scene at Igoeti made plain the Russian eagerness to demonstrate its military prowess.
A Russian army officer approached a Georgian police checkpoint leading off the main road and demanded that the Georgians clear the way.
"You have five minutes to move your cars," he told the Georgian policeman. And then it was three minutes. The Georgian, addressing the Russian as "Mr. Colonel," pleaded: "I have an order, I cannot move my cars."
A few minutes later, the Russian waved his hand, and an armored fighting vehicle plowed through the roadblock of Georgian police cars, its tracks crushing into their sides.
Russian armor positions were parked alongside the road between Gori and Igoeti, with some soldiers lounging on their vehicles and others manning machine guns. The young men in dirty uniforms did not look tense; Russian flags flapped on top some of their trucks, deep in the heart of Georgia.
On the outskirts of Igoeti, a Russian soldier shrugged when asked if he was withdrawing anytime soon, saying: "We'll probably be here tomorrow."
A Russian soldier standing near the entrance of Gori said that, "When we are finished, we will drink some Georgian wine."
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev again charged Monday that Georgia had provoked the clash 10 days ago by sending forces into South Ossetia, a region in North Georgia that Tbilisi wants to control. "We shall do our best to not let this crime go unpunished," state newswires quoted Medvedev as saying.
He said those who attack Russian citizens in the future will "face a crushing response." He omitted to mention that Russia has given Russian passports to many residents of South Ossetia, and to residents in its fellow rebel province in the west, Abkhazia.
Georgian politicians maintain that the Russian presence has little to do with the plight of the South Ossetians and is an attempt to cut off Georgia's close relations with the west. Georgia has applied for membership to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and wants to join the Europe Union as well.
"The goal of the attack was to undermine Georgia's independence," Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said Monday. The Russian foreign ministry poured scorn on Saakashvili. "For reasons that any sensible persons will understand, we do not regard Mikhail Saakashvili as a negotiating partner," it said in a statement.
In western Georgia, along the second flank of the Russian offensive, there was no evidence of a Russian pullback by mid-afternoon. As they had the day before, Russian tanks occupied the regional police compound in and around Zugdidi, near the breakaway region of Abkhazia. In the morning, a convoy of 12 Russian military vehicles, including three tanks, rolled south toward the key Black Sea port of Poti.
Few civilian cars moved along the 30-mile stretch of road connecting Poti and Zugdidi. And beyond Zugdidi, in the villages closest to the edge of Abkhazia, there were almost no vehicles at all.
Around midday, at the last checkpoint before Abkhazia, a taxi driver waited in vain for clients crossing the border into Georgian-controlled territory. Kuladi Todua, the driver, said the only vehicles that crossed through that day were Russian military trucks.
Source 02: Guardian UK
Russia last night continued to occupy large swaths of Georgia in defiance of an EU-brokered ceasefire deal, with no sign of significant troop withdrawals.
Despite claims by Moscow that a pullout had begun, Russian forces could be seen across most of the country, and Georgian officials claimed that armoured columns had tried to push further into the mountainous heartland, towards Borjomi in the south and Sachkhere in the west.
Link to this audio
Julian Borger in Tbilisi on Nato efforts to resolve the crisis in Georgia
"We could leave here in two minutes. But we've had no orders to pull out," said a Russian soldier manning a checkpoint yesterday about 25 miles west of the capital, Tbilisi. He knew nothing about a ceasefire.
Georgia's foreign minister, Eka Tkeshelashvili, said Russian troops had razed a Georgian military base at the western city of Senaki.
"Practically speaking there are so far no signs of withdrawal at all. What they're trying to do is to widen their territorial presence," Tkeshelashvili said before flying to Brussels to appeal for support from Nato foreign ministers today. "They have pretty much unrestricted freedom of action. They are trying to show us they are masters on the ground right now."
She said she would call for punitive diplomatic measures against Russia, excluding Moscow from international institutions, if Moscow refused to comply.
A Georgian interior ministry spokesman said columns of Russian armoured vehicles were stopped by police roadblocks outside Borjomi and Sachkhere and agreed to turn back. But another column broke through a similar roadblock west of Tbilisi.
One report circulated yesterday evening suggested the Russian forces would only begin their promised withdrawal after nightfall, and Georgian officials said they would review the situation in the morning after further international pressure.
"I might be naive, but I'm still hopeful that a very strong, common effort by Europe and the United States will be effective in the withdrawing of Russian troops from territory of Georgia," Tkeshelashvili said. "We'll see how well grounded my expectation is."
President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to initiate a troop withdrawal yesterday after signing the agreement on Saturday. On Sunday he told France's president Nicholas Sarkozy a pullout was imminent.
Last night Russian officers insisted that the withdrawal was already happening. In Moscow the deputy chief of staff, Anatoly Nogovitsyn, said: "According to the peace plan, the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers and reinforcements has begun." This included Gori, he added.
Russian officials across the border in North Ossetia echoed this. "War columns are already leaving. The main pullout will take place today. It takes a long time to pack up a tank," a Russian spokesman in the North Ossetia capital, Vladikavkaz, said. "We are talking days not weeks."
Another Russian military spokesman, Lieutenant General Nikolay Uvarov, told the BBC last night that Russian forces had left Gori, which lies on the main east-west highway running through the heart of the country. However, Russian troops were very much in evidence in the town, and at checkpoints between Tbilisi and Gori, searching cars and cutting the road between east and west Georgia. Nor was there a sign of military movement from Gori north towards South Ossetia.
Georgian officials also claimed the Russians were busy laying mines. Tkeshelashvili said that one of her principal appeals to Nato today will be for help in demining.
Russia's most forward position last night was where it had been for the past few days, at Igoeti, 27 miles from the capital. Russian tanks were visible today in the surrounding wooded hills. An armoured vehicle also ploughed into a line of stationary Georgian police cars.
"Russian forces are not leaving. They are merely rotating their hardware. One comes, another one goes," said Irakly Porchkhidze, a Georgian government official inside Gori, where humanitarian relief was arriving today. He added: "There is no pullout."
There was growing concern that the Kremlin plans to exploit ambiguities in the Sarkozy-drafted agreement to justify a semi-permanent presence inside Georgia's borders. Moscow today indicated it intended to deploy its forces under an internationally brokered peace agreement in 1999, allowing Russia a generous "security zone". The zone extends nine miles around Tskhinvali and allows a "corridor" into Georgian areas. The document was designed to end the Georgian-Ossetian conflict and agreed by a joint control commission, an international body. The Georgian foreign minister, Tkeshelashvili, said the 1999 deal only allowed Russia a maximum of 500 peacekeepers, not to garrison towns or set up checkpoints.
Additionally, South Ossetian militias yesterday said they had no intention of handing back territory. On Saturday the militias, supported by Russian heavy armour, seized Akhalgori, 25 miles north-west of Tbilisi. "This is now ours. It's Ossetian land," one militia man said yesterday morning.
The town was under the control of South Ossetia's interior ministry and police administration, he said. The Georgian flag had been replaced by a white, red and yellow Ossetian one.
