No Sign of Military Withdrawal As Russian Armour Stays Put

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 armored 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 armored 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 armor, 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.