OUTSIDE GORI, Georgia: Russian troops and paramilitaries rolled into the strategic Georgian city of Gori yesterday, apparently violating a truce designed to end the conflict that has uprooted tens of thousands and scarred the Georgian landscape. Georgian officials said Gori, a central hub on Georgia’s main east-west highway, was looted and bombed by the Russians before they left later in the day.
Moscow denied the accusations, but it appeared to be on a technicality: a BBC reporter in Gori reported that Russians tanks were in the streets as their South Ossetian separatist allies seized Georgian cars, looted Georgian homes and then set some homes ablaze.
“Russia has treacherously broken its word,” Georgia’s Security Council chief Alexander Lomaia said yesterday in Tbilisi, the capital.
An AP reporter saw dozens of trucks and armored vehicles leaving Gori, roaring southeast. Soldiers waved at journalists and one soldier jokingly shouted to a photographer: “Come with us, beauty, we’re going to Tbilisi!”
But the convoy turned north and left the highway about an hour’s drive from the Georgian capital, and set up camp a mile off the road. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russian troops were near Gori to secure weapons left behind by the Georgians.
To the west, Russian-backed Abkhazian separatists pushed Georgian troops out of Abkhazia and even moved into Georgian territory itself, defiantly planting a flag over the Inguri River and laughing that retreating Georgians had received “American training in running away.” The developments came less than 12 hours after Georgia’s president said he accepted a cease-fire plan brokered by France. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday that Russia was halting military action because Georgia had paid enough for its attack last Thursday on South Ossetia.
Bush skeptical
In Washington, President Bush said he was skeptical that Moscow was honoring the cease-fire and announced that a massive US humanitarian effort was already in progress, and would involve US aircraft as well as naval forces.
“To begin to repair the damage to its relations with the United States, Europe and other nations and to begin restoring its place in the world, Russia must keep its word and act to end this crisis,” Bush said.
The EU peace plan calls for both sides to retreat to the positions they held prior to the outbreak of fighting late Thursday.
That phrasing apparently would allow Georgian forces to return to the positions they held in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and clearly obliges Russia to leave all parts of Georgia except South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili criticized Western nations for failing to help Georgia, a US ally that has been seeking NATO membership.
“I feel that they are partly to blame,” he said yesterday. “Not only those who commit atrocities are responsible ... but so are those who fail to react. In a way, Russians are fighting a proxy war with the West through us.”
