stoki

Russian Seems to Be Hunkering Down in Georgia

By ANDREW E. KRAMER
GORI, Georgia — Russia claimed that it had begun withdrawing its troops from Georgia on Monday, but there was little evidence of it on the ground: Russian soldiers continued digging in to positions along the highway approaching the capital, Tbilisi, showing no sign of pulling back from the severest confrontation between Russia and the West since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Along one major road, four Russian armored personnel carriers rattled a few miles closer to the capital, then plowed through parked police cars blocking the way as Georgian police officers stood by in helpless dismay.
Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said his nation’s forces would begin a withdrawal on Monday to comply with a six-point peace accord signed by both sides over the weekend. Mr. Medvedev did not specify the pace or scope of the withdrawal, saying only that troops would withdraw to South Ossetia and a so-called security zone on its periphery.
In Moscow on Monday, Russia’s state news agency, the Russian Information Agency, reported that one of its correspondents saw small convoys of 5 to 10 tanks moving north through the Roki tunnel toward Russia through the day.
But in Washington, Defense Department and military officials said there was no evidence of Russian forces’ complying with pledges to pull back.
“We have not seen any significant Russian movement out of Georgia today,” said one senior Pentagon official.
On the ground in Georgia, about 25 miles outside the capital along the main highway, the four Russian armored personnel carriers passed the Russian checkpoint at Igoeti and headed in the other direction, toward Tbilisi. Soldiers were piled on top, cradling Kalashnikov rifles.
As they drove by, one old man, Koba Gurnashvili, stepped into the road and yelled at them, “Where do you think you’re going!” One of the soldiers yelled back, “To Tbilisi.”
But they did not, instead turning up a side road leading to a village near the border with South Ossetia. They stopped at an intersection blocked by Georgian police cars.
The Russian commander climbed off his tank and began arguing with the Georgian police officers. He said he had orders to move up the road; a Georgian officer said he had orders to remain on the road, and asked to call his superiors for guidance. The Russian said, “You have three minutes to move your cars.”
The two argued for a few minutes more. Then the police officers stepped away from their cars, stone-faced, with their keys. The tank smashed aside the cars and kept going.
At the entrance to the central city of Gori, which has been in Russian hands for days, Russian soldiers sat on armored personnel carriers, smoking or napping in the heat of the afternoon.
Soldiers held the main bridge and the military base, and were running checkpoints on the roads. Convoys were shuttling to Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. Some soldiers, grubby after days in the field, were swimming naked in rivers.
“They are not moving,” said Temuri Yakobashvili, Georgia’s reintegration minister. He said an attempt at a prisoner exchange on Monday fell through because Georgian officials suspected that Russia was not providing a complete list of prisoners. The Russian military said that the Georgians had introduced unspecified political demands in the prisoner exchange negotiation.
In Crawford, Tex., where President Bush is vacationing, a White House spokesman said that the United States was closely watching whether Russia honored its agreement to withdraw. The spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said it was too soon to say whether the Russians were in compliance.
But he said that any military equipment or forces sent into the region during the fighting needed to be withdrawn under the cease-fire agreement.
“If it rolled in after Aug. 6, it needs to roll out,” Mr. Johndroe told reporters, referring to the day before the conflict started.
Mr. Medvedev on Monday cautioned that any force used against these soldiers would provoke a response.
“Obviously, if anyone thinks he can kill our citizens, our soldiers and officers who are serving as peacekeepers, and go unpunished, we will never allow this,” Mr. Medvedev said. “Anyone who tries this will receive a devastating response. For this, we have all the means — economic and political and military. If anyone had illusions about this some time ago, then they must part with those illusions now.”
He added: “We do not want to aggravate the situation, but we want to be respected, and our government to be respected, and our people to be respected, and our values.”
France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who brokered the deal, has clarified that it does not allow Russia to block the main highway, or for Russian soldiers to occupy the strategically important central city of Gori, astride the east-west highway; nonetheless, tanks were on the highway on Monday.
On a visit to Tbilisi on Sunday, Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, reiterated this position and said Russian forces should pull back immediately. She cautioned that foreign ministers from NATO countries would be watching the withdrawal on Tuesday at an emergency meeting in Brussels.
The cease-fire accord agreed to by both sides allows Russia to conduct vaguely defined “security operations” outside the separatist regions where the conflict began, a point the Russians have cited as a justification for occupying a large swath of Georgian territory.
At the checkpoint nearest Tbilisi, about 25 miles away, Russian soldiers were carrying round river rocks and stacking them in tires to form a barricade across the road. One soldier, shirtless in the heat, took a break and crouched near a pond, splashing the back of his neck with water.
On the Tbilisi-Gori highway, Russian soldiers showed no signs of pulling back. They lounged on their tanks, slept in the shade of trees beside the road or were apparently busy improving their fighting positions.
Outside the village of Natsreti, soldiers used a small, white front loader to pile dirt beside the road in front of a tank; the gun poked just over the top, aimed at the road. Beside the road, soldiers sat in the shade under the awnings of bus stops, eating rations.
The road between Tbilisi and Gori runs 45 miles along the southern rim of an agricultural valley, framed by ridges of the Caucasus Mountains, with many small villages dotting the plain. Along the road were patches of fields and trees immolated by fire started in the fighting.
Outside one village, a number of Russian tanks and trucks were parked in a field on Monday. Through binoculars, more tanks were visible out on the plain, parked behind tree lines and below the crests of small hills.
At their checkpoints, the Russian soldiers cast aside green plastic bags of military rations, including pouches of sugar, applesauce and tea bags all marked with a small red star. From the checkpoint at the entrance to Gori, explosions could be heard reverberating through the city from time to time; their origin was unclear.
Through the day, armored personnel carriers and fuel trucks rolled both ways along the highway, toward Tbilisi and back again, with no apparent purpose.
Meanwhile, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe stressed the need for more international monitors. The organization has proposed increasing the number of monitors up to 100 as soon as possible. Efforts to finalize the arrangements for such a deployment are under way in Vienna.

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By the time you get this it will be yesterdays news, I noticed your post too late. lol (Im not NYtimes member either and it worked fine )