AFP: No sign of large-scale Russian withdrawal
By Bertrand de Saisset
There was no sign here Monday of a massive Russian force withdrawal from Georgia although Russia media reported that an expected pullout of personnel and weaponry had begun.
An AFP reporter travelling south from Tskhinvali, the capital of the rebel Georgian province of South Ossetia, toward the Georgian city of Gori, saw Russian military vehicles parked on the roadside, accompanied by their crews.
At a crossing point further north on the border between Russia and South Ossetia, AFP saw military vehicles, some carrying lumber and other building materials, moving in both directions, but no sign of large-scale withdrawal.
Russia’s state-run news agency RIA Novosti, citing its own correspondent in Tskhinvali, reported that the withdrawal that President Dmitry Medvedev promised would begin on Monday had got under way.
“After we got the order to pull our units out of South Ossetia, we began loading material and preparing to move out,” the agency quoted a senior Russian officer in Tskhinvali as saying.
“But it needs to be understood that it cannot be done in a matter of minutes or hours,” the officer said, referring to a full-scale pullout.
RIA said some units comprising five to 10 military vehicles apiece had pulled out of the area heading back toward the southern Russian city of Vladikavkaz.
On Sunday, Medvedev told his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy that Russian regular forces “from tomorrow… will begin withdrawing,” the Kremlin said.
Russia sent a giant invasion force of troops and armour into Georgia earlier this month to repel an Georgian attack on South Ossetia, whose separatist administration is backed by Moscow.
On Monday morning, about a dozen trucks from Russia’s emergency situations ministry, apparently carrying humanitarian aid, went south into Georgia as 20 more waited to cross, along with seven military trucks containing wooden boards and other materials.
The movement in the other direction was less pronounced, with just several military convoys heading north into Russia. Dozens of civilians were also making their their way back to South Ossetia on Monday in cars and mini-buses.
“I am from Tskhinvali (the South Ossetian capital). My house was destroyed, but we must return,” one woman told AFP.
About 8,000 of the 37,000 South Ossetian refugees who fled to Russia after the outbreak of hostilities have returned, the RIA Novosti news agency quoted an official from Russia’s federal migration service as saying Monday.
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