Russian troops started pulling back from a buffer zone outside Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region today, two months after a brief war that fuelled tension between Moscow and the West.
A witness reported seeing about 10 Russian military trucks and several armoured vehicles leave the main Karaleti checkpoint next to breakaway South Ossetia, heading north towards the de facto border. Russia said the pullback had begun.
Russia has until Friday to pull back troops from buffer zones outside South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another breakaway Georgian region, under a ceasefire deal brokered by France on behalf of the European Union.
The zones were set down after Russia sent in tanks and troops to repel a Georgian offensive to retake pro-Russian South Ossetia. The five-day war in August followed months of skirmishes between separatists and Georgian troops.
Russia's counter-offensive against Georgia drew condemnation from the West, and deepened fears over the security of the Caucasus as a transit route for oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to western Europe, bypassing Russia.
In western Georgia, a television reporter saw a column of 50 to 60 Russian military vehicles leave a military base and cross the Inguri river into breakaway Abkhazia.
An unarmed EU observer mission is monitoring the pullback. Chief monitor Hansjoerg Haber said Russian troops were lifting checkpoints in western Georgia near Abkhazia.
He said it would be up to the EU in Brussels to confirm Russia's compliance with the ceasefire deal.
Marat Kulakhmetov, commander of Russian peacekeeping forces in the Georgia-South Ossetia conflict zone, said the pullout would be completed in daylight hours. "Everything is completely on track," he told reporters.
A second line of Russian troops is located on the de facto border with South Ossetia.
Georgian police are expected to move into the zones behind the retreating Russian troops, to avoid a security vacuum the EU monitors fear could be exploited by paramilitaries.
Thousands of Georgian villagers fled the South Ossetia buffer zone, and human rights groups say militias were looting and burning homes.