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Russia withdraws forces from Georgia

MOSCOW: Russia withdrew all its forces from western Georgia on Saturday ahead of the agreed deadline.

Russian troops packed up their outposts between Georgia’s Black Sea port of Poti and the town of Senaki and left Georgia, said the Russian Foreign Ministry in a statement.

They did it two days before the deadline set in an agreement negotiated between Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev and France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy on September 8, the statement stressed.

The region is located miles away from South Ossetia, which was attacked by Georgia last month, but Russian troops took over Poti and Senaki to prevent Georgia from attacking nearby Abkhazia, the other breakaway territory of Georgia.

The Russian Foreign Ministry called on the EU to honour its pledge to deploy at least 200 observers in Georgia along the borders with South Ossetia and Abkhazia by October 1, which would allow Russia to withdraw its remaining troops from Georgia by October 10, as per the Medvedev-Sarkozy accord.

E.U. foreign policy chief Javier Solana was quoted as saying on Saturday that he had enough pledges from member-States to form a 200-strong team of monitors and deploy it in Georgia before the beginning of October.

AP reports from Moscow:

Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he expects the next U.S. administration to improve the two countries’ relations.

“This was so in WW I and WW II. We in Russia have never forgotten this. We would like our American partners to remember this as well,” Mr. Putin was quoted as saying in an interview published on Saturday in the French daily Le Figaro.

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