Russia and Georgia at war

[Rasputin]

European leaders warned Russia yesterday to withdraw its forces rapidly from Georgia or face unspecified consequences, as Moscow stalled on its pledges to honour a ceasefire and pull back the thousands of troops from the Caucasus republic.

With the US and European governments due to meet tomorrow to consider their options for the first time since the crisis erupted 10 days ago, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France threatened the Kremlin with an ultimatum for the first time, warning that more delays in a pullout "would have serious consequences on relations between Russia and the European Union".

The French warning echoed similar statements from the Americans in recent days, none of which appears to have rattled the Russians, whose forces remain in firm control of large tracts of Georgia well beyond the two separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

"People are going to begin to wonder if Russia can be trusted," said Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, yesterday of Moscow's failure to keep its promises.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, added to the pressure on Moscow by insisting on an "urgent" retreat. She also backed Georgian aspirations to join Nato. Downing Street said it would send the foreign secretary, David Miliband, to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, later this week.

In Moscow, President Dmitri Medvedev said Russia's troops would start withdrawing today. But there is a yawning gap between what Moscow and the west understand by withdrawal.

Yesterday, Russian forces appeared to be entrenching their positions on the ground barely 30 miles from Tbilisi.

Nato foreign ministers are to hold an emergency meeting in Brussels tomorrow on their response. The Americans could call for a suspension of the Nato-Russia council, a talking shop that goes back more than a decade and symbolises the post-cold war rapprochement that has been shaken by the invasion of Georgia.

The conflict has reopened old rifts among the western allies that recall the "old Europe-new Europe" divisions over the Iraq war in 2003.

France and Germany are keen to maintain smooth relations with Moscow and fear that the EU's mediation role will be jeopardised if they take sides.

The east Europeans in Nato and the EU are strongly on the side of Georgia, looking not to Brussels, Paris or Berlin, but to Washington for leadership. At the weekend, President Lech Kaczynski of Poland slammed France and Germany for being too soft on Moscow, and complained that they were trying to monopolise the EU position.

France was unapologetic. "We have to invent a new language with regard to Russia. That is what the European Union is trying to do," said Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister.

Sarkozy, the current EU president who negotiated a six-point ceasefire agreement with the Russians and Georgians last week, called for the "withdrawal, without delay, of all the Russian military forces that entered Georgia since August 7", when the fighting started.

The Russians, with an estimated 10,000 troops and 150 tanks in Georgia, show no intention of withdrawing the entire invasion force, and plan to leave troops in Georgia proper, beyond the two pro-Russian breakaway provinces. Yesterday, troops set up a series of checkpoints between Tbilisi and Gori. The first checkpoint near the town of Igoeti is less than 30 miles from the Georgian capital. Georgian drivers turned back by the Russians said they were told they needed permission from Russia's ambassador in Georgia to drive down the road - which connects the east and west of the country.

The Russian military continues to occupy around two thirds of the country, including several towns they were supposed to leave under the terms of the ceasefire deal agreed on Saturday by Medvedev.

The Kremlin said from today Russia would "begin the withdrawal of the military contingent moved to reinforce Russian peacekeepers after the Georgian aggression against South Ossetia". But it said the force would not retreat to Russia, only to South Ossetia, and that forces would stay in the "security zone."

The Russians intend to establish buffer zones in previously Georgian-controlled territory beyond South Ossetia and Abkhazia. One of the most contentious points of the Sarkozy's ceasefire plan allows Moscow "to take additional security measures" beyond the two enclaves until "an international mechanism" is established.

The "international mechanism", entailing perhaps UN-mandated international peacekeepers, will take weeks to establish at a minimum. The EU is endeavouring to be the main middleman. But apart from perhaps sending a few dozen unarmed ceasefire monitors in the days ahead, it is unlikely to grapple with the bigger issues of peacekeepers until EU foreign ministers meet in Avignon in France next month.

Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, said he would not be happy until every Russian soldier had left his country's territory. "Georgia will never give up a square kilometre of its territory," he said.

[Rasputin]

Russia tonight 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.

"We could leave here in two minutes. But we've had no orders to pull out," said a Russian soldier manning a checkpoint today 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 tomorrow. "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 this 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 today after signing the agreement on Saturday. On Sunday he told France's president Nicholas Sarkozy a pullout was imminent.

Tonight 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 tonight 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 tomorrow will be for help in demining.

Russia's most forward position tonight 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 today 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 this 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.

[Rasputin]

Russian troops will pull back from Georgia's heartland by the end of this week, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, but NATO said it was freezing contacts with Moscow until all Russian forces were out of the country.

Western powers, led by the United States, have called for an immediate withdrawal of Russian troops under a ceasefire plan that ended the two countries' short war over the rebel Georgian province of South Ossetia.

NATO ministers, meeting in emergency session in Brussels, backed this demand by suspending regular contacts with Russia. But they did not announce moves to speed up Georgian accession to the Western military alliance, as Tbilisi had hoped.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference NATO's response to the conflict was biased, and accused NATO of siding with a "criminal regime" in Tbilisi.

The tensions were mirrored at the United Nations, where Western powers pressed the Security Council to adopt a resolution calling for an immediate Russian withdrawal. Moscow, which holds veto power, said it could not support it.

Earlier, the Kremlin quoted Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as saying that Russian forces would pull back by August 22 to the positions set out under the French-brokered ceasefire.

That would require most of them to withdraw to Russia or South Ossetia, but parts of the force, under the terms of the deal, will remain in a buffer zone around the breakaway region.

"By 22 August ... a part of the peacekeepers will be pulled back to the temporary security zone," a Kremlin statement quoted Medvedev as telling French President Nicolas Sarkozy in a telephone conversation.

"The remaining contingent that was used to reinforce the peacekeepers will be pulled back to the territory of South Ossetia and to Russia," the statement said.

Medvedev told Sarkozy he agreed to the presence of observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in the buffer zone, Sarkozy's office said in a separate statement.

U.S. officials said they had not seen any substantial withdrawal of Russian troops so far.

COLUMN ON MOVE

In Gori, a strategic town on Georgia's main east-west highway, six Russian armored personnel carriers, three tanks and two other vehicles started their engines and drove out through the sun-scorched countryside, kicking up clouds of dust.

"This is one of the first units to be pulled out," said an official from Russia's Foreign Ministry, which arranged for reporters to watch the column leave.

But close by, Russian troops could be seen digging trenches near artillery positions. Shirtless paratroopers sunbathed in the street on civilian sofas and couches.

Later on Tuesday a Reuters reporter, traveling on the main road used by Russian troops to enter Georgia, saw little traffic heading out of Georgia and no evidence of a large-scale pullout.

"The Russians time and again move their tanks to Tskhinvali (the South Ossetian capital) from Gori and then back again. I categorically deny this amounts to a withdrawal," said Shota Utiashvili, an official at Georgia's Interior Ministry.

Conflict erupted over separatist South Ossetia when Georgia sent in its army to try to take back the pro-Moscow province on August 7-8, provoking a huge counter-attack from Russia.

Stepping up Russian pressure on Tbilisi, Moscow closed its land border with Georgia to citizens who are not from the CIS, a grouping of former Soviet states that Georgia's parliament voted last week to leave.

The head of Russia's main domestic FSB spy service, Alexander Bortnikov, ordered extra security to foil what he said was a plan by Georgian security to carry out "terrorist acts" inside Russia. Georgia dismissed the accusation as "nonsense".

Air, rail and sea links between Russia and its former Soviet vassal have already been cut. The virtual blockade has hurt Georgia's economy, which depends heavily on Russia.

Western powers have condemned Russia's response as disproportionate, while Moscow says it is necessary to protect Russian citizens and Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia and prevent Georgia carrying out "genocide".

The Russian military campaign has been popular at home but has worsened already bad relations with Washington.

Russia's navy cancelled a September visit by a U.S. frigate, after Washington decided last week to pull out of a four-nation naval exercise with Russia in the Pacific.

PRESSURE ON SAAKASHVILI

Saakashvili accuses Russia of trying to sabotage his leadership and Georgian democracy.

But Russia's Lavrov said restrictions imposed by Saakashvili's government on Russian news media and Internet sites cast doubt on Georgia's right to call itself a democracy.

"You can probably judge objectively for yourselves the state of Georgian democracy and who is trying to wreck it," Lavrov said. He added that Russia had no plans to occupy Georgia or annex parts of its territory.

But Russian checkpoints now block the main east-west highway, a vital trade route that links Tbilisi with Turkey and Georgia's Black Sea ports. Russian soldiers have also moved into towns in western Georgia, controlling traffic and movement.

Russian forces said they had detained 20 "heavily armed" Georgians in the Black Sea port of Poti. A Reuters cameraman saw several blindfolded men being put into Russian armored personnel carriers.

[Rasputin]

Russia last night claimed to have completed its long-awaited withdrawal from Georgia, after a day which saw mile-long columns of tanks and armoured vehicles pulling out of their forward positions and heading back north to Russia.

Russian forces began pulling out of Gori yesterday afternoon. At 8.30pm (local time) last night Georgian police forces finally entered the town after the last Russian tanks rumbled out. The main east-west highway across Georgia reopened for the first time in nine days.

Last night, however, both the US president George Bush and French president Nicholas Sarkozy accused Russia of failing to "comply" with the ceasefire deal, after Moscow said it intended to leave behind 2,500 troops on Georgian territory.

The deputy chief of Russia's general staff, Gen Anatoly Nogovitsyn, said more than 2500 "peacekeeping" troops with armoured cars and helicopters would remain inside a new "buffer zone" bordering the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Georgia immediately denounced the move. The White House said the Russians had palpably failed to live up to their obligations, adding: "Establishing checkpoints, buffer zones, are definitely not part of the text." David Miliband, the foreign secretary, said he was "deeply concerned" that Russia still had not withdrawn to pre-conflict positions.

Under the Sarkozy-brokered agreement Russian forces are obliged to withdraw to the line they occupied prior to Georgia's incursion into separatist-run South Ossetia on August 7/8. The text is, however, vague. It allows the Russians to take "additional security measures".

Russia now apparently insists that a previous agreement permits it to station troops in a new "security zone" between Gori and South Ossetia's capital, Tshkinvali. Georgia and western diplomats say this is a clear breach of the ceasefire deal.

Yesterday's semi-withdrawal follows a series of delays and mixed signals from the Kremlin about when - and indeed if - it intended to leave Georgia. It came amid intense international pressure from the US, the EU and others for an "immediate" pullout.

Russia's president Dmitry Medvedev, who signed the agreement last weekend, promised the withdrawal would start yesterday. The first signs of a pullout came when Russian troops abandoned their Igoeti checkpoint, 43km outside Tbilisi, yesterday afternoon.

"We're going home. Our mood is marvellous, beautiful. We came here, experienced war, and are going back in one piece," Osman, a 23-year-old Russian solider from Dagestan told the Guardian last night. He added: "The only shame is we didn't make it to Tbilisi."

Yesterday Shota Utiashviavi, a spokesman for Georgia's interior ministry, welcomed Russia's departure from Gori. But he said Moscow appeared determined to leave behind a permanent military presence on Georgian territory.

"There's been no withdrawal from western Georgia. They are putting up checkpoints in [the port of] Poti. The ceasefire agreement clearly says that they don't have any right to block any major road or to be in major urban areas," he said.

Russia has suggested its new buffer zone could extend at least eight miles beyond its old positions. South Ossetian troops have also occupied towns outside the original rebel-controlled enclave - but inside the old Soviet-era borders of South Ossetia.

Many Georgians, however, last night expressed joy at Russia's pullout. "It's beautiful. I feel a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I feel free," Koba Chirodze, 41, from Vanni, near Gori, said.

[Rasputin]

Small numbers of Russian troops dug in deep inside Georgia on Sunday and Western states demanded Moscow's forces leave a Black Sea port, two days after Moscow said it had wrapped up its withdrawal.

Russia says the residual troops are peacekeepers needed to avert further bloodshed and to protect the people of Georgia's separatist, pro-Moscow provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The United States and Europe fear the Russian presence will cement Georgia's ethnic partition, undermine the pro-Western government of President Mikheil Saakashvili and threaten vital energy pipelines criss-crossing the country's territory.

Particularly worrisome for Tbilisi and the West is a checkpoint set up at the port of Poti, which lies outside the security zone Russia says is covered by its peacekeeping mandate and is hundreds of km (miles) from South Ossetia.

"Putting up permanent facilities and checkpoints are inconsistent with the (ceasefire) agreement," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

EU president France, which helped broker a ceasefire in the confrontation that erupted on August 7-8, urged Kremlin leader Dmitry Medvedev to order Russian forces out of Poti in a telephone conversation on Saturday.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy "insisted it was important that Russian troops present at the Poti/Senaki area should withdraw as soon as possible," a French statement said.

The Kremlin said Sarkozy had given a "positive assessment" of the Russian pullout.

Though not Georgia's busiest port for oil, Poti can load up to 100,000 barrels per day of oil products, which arrive by rail from Azerbaijan. Poti is also the gateway for merchandise moving to Georgia, other Caucasus republics and Central Asia.

"Why do they want to take control of Poti?... Maybe they want to grab Poti from us. While we are still alive we will not allow them to stay here," said Roland Silagava, 60, at a Georgian protest rally at the Poti checkpoint on Saturday.

The 20 or so Russian soldiers, sporting peacekeeper badges, just smiled and said they did not expect to stay there long.

RESURGENT RUSSIA

The conflict broke out when Georgia tried to retake South Ossetia. A Russian counter-offensive pushed into Georgia proper, crossing its East-West highway and nearing a Western-backed oil pipeline.

They also moved into Western Georgia from Abkhazia, another breakaway region on the Black Sea. Hundreds of people were killed, tens of thousands displaced and housing and infrastructure wrecked in the conflict.

Sarkozy's office said he and Medvedev on Saturday had agreed on the urgency of creating an international mechanism under the auspices of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to replace Russian patrols in the buffer zone south of South Ossetia.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said only peacekeepers from countries acceptable to South Ossetian and Abkhazian separatists could be effective in the region, and made clear they will not accept anyone apart from Russians.

Despite repeated demands for a complete Russian pullback to positions prior to the conflict the West lacks leverage over a resurgent Russia whose oil and gas it sorely needs.

A U.S. trade official said Russia's actions could affect its membership of the Group of Eight industrialized nations and its bid to join the World Trade Organization.

"That is all at risk now," U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez was quoted as saying by Germany's Der Spiegel weekly.

Analysts say excluding or isolating Russia would anger it further and make it even less amenable to Western demands.

The U.S. envoy to the Caucasus said Russia had inadvertently helped Georgia's bid for NATO membership with its actions. Moscow sees Georgia and other ex-Soviet republics as part of its legitimate sphere of influence and opposes them joining NATO.

"I think what Russia has done now is the strongest catalyst it could have created to get Georgia in NATO," U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza told Ekho Moskvy radio.

NATO has frozen regular contacts with Russia but the West needs Russian help on a range of issues such as Iran and Afghanistan.

[Rasputin]

Russian lawmakers meet on Monday to discuss pleas by Georgian separatists for Moscow to recognize their independence, a move that could stoke tensions with the West over Russia's military intervention in pro-Western Georgia.

The non-binding resolutions on South Ossetia and Abkhazia could flag Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's intentions or be designed to strengthen his hand with the West as he negotiates the status of Russian forces in its former Soviet vassal.

EU president France, which brokered a ceasefire in the conflict which has killed hundreds of people and made thousands more homeless, called a September 1 meeting of EU leaders to discuss the crisis and review the bloc's relations with Russia.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said ties with Moscow could be scaled back if its troops were not fully withdrawn.

The United States, which has said Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organisation could also suffer, on Sunday delivered 55 tonnes of aid aboard the warship USS McFaul a gesture of support for Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili that is likely to further inflame anti-West sentiment in Moscow.

Russia sent in troops on August 8 to crush Georgia's bid to retake the pro-Moscow rebel region of South Ossetia, rattling markets and shocking Western states alarmed by the Kremlin's assertive behavior in a key oil and gas transit route.

Moscow, which withdrew the bulk of its forces from Georgia's heartland on Friday, says residual troops are peacekeepers needed to avert further bloodshed and protect Georgia's separatist, pro-Moscow provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

But Georgia and the West object to the scale of the Russian-imposed buffer zone adjoining the two rebel regions, which hands Moscow pressure points on key oil, gas and trade routes through Georgia to the Black Sea.

Washington and Europe fear the continued Russian presence in Georgia will cement the country's ethnic partition and undermine Saakashvili's pro-Western government.

BARGAINING CHIP

Russia's formal recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and the Black Sea province of Abkhazia, would put it on a collision course with the West, which insists that Georgia's territorial integrity be fully respected.

Members of the Federation Council upper house and the State Duma, the lower chamber, have cut short their summer recess to discuss the issue at extraordinary sessions.

The Federation Council's website (www.council.gov.ru) said its session would start at 10 a.m. (0600 GMT) on Monday. At noon (0800 GMT), the Duma is due to discuss a similar agenda, Russian news agencies have said.

"The Federation Council is ready to recognize Abkhazia's and South Ossetia's independence, if the people of these regions wish and if there is an appropriate decision by the Russian president," the chamber's head Sergei Mironov said on Friday.

Analysts say resolutions by the parliamentary chambers, both tightly controlled by the Kremlin, could give Medvedev a formal pretext for the recognition of the regions.

On August 14 Medvedev told separatist leaders in Moscow that Russia would support a drive for self-determination by Abkhazia and South Ossetia and vowed to guarantee any such move.

However, the Kremlin could -- as he has done in the past -- ignore pleas by parliament that would exacerbate its confrontation with the West, and instead use domestic pressure as a bargaining chip in a future trade-off with the West.

Lawmakers could also adopt less radical resolutions, leaving the Kremlin to handle relations with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, having full-scale ties without formal recognition. That would mirror the way most states deal with Taiwan, which China considers as a renegade province.

Russia has so far resisted repeated calls for formal recognition by South Ossetians and Abkhazians, although Kremlin officials have hinted that the Western recognition of Serbia's breakaway region of Kosovo has created a precedent.

Moscow says its armed intervention averted a "genocide" of Ossetians by Georgia, and Russian leaders have said it is unthinkable the rebels would agree to reunite with Georgia.

Despite repeated demands for a complete Russian pullback to positions before the conflict, the West lacks leverage over a resurgent Russia whose oil and gas it sorely needs.