Russia Begins Pullback From Georgia Buffer Zone

By Cernig

On time, the Russian military has begun dismantling its presence in a buffer zone between Georgia proper and the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It's a bit of a blow to the neo-narrative.

Moscow faces a Friday deadline for pulling back its troops under the terms of a deal brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on behalf of the European Union. Hundreds of EU observers began monitoring Russia's compliance last week.

A pullback would likely mean at least a mild reduction of tensions between Russia and the West following their worst confrontation since the Soviet collapse. But substantial points of dispute remain.

Russia was dismantling positions Sunday inside what it calls security zones, extending roughly four miles inside uncontested Georgian territory.

But Moscow vows to keep thousands of its troops stationed in two separatist Georgian regions that it recognizes as independent countries — South Ossetia and Abkhazia — which appears to stretch the terms of the cease-fire and which the Georgian government denounces.

Really, did anyone seriously expect Russia to do anything else, or Georgia to do less than denounce its continued presence in those regions? Western rhetoric on this entirely subjective "stretching" of the ceasefire is simple posturing too. If the situation was reversed, the US or any Western power would of course stay to protect people who look to it for safety against their own titular national government...who launched a surprise bombing attack on their own regional capital.

But at least the Europeans got off their asses and brokered the current ceasefire deal, while the Bush administration was still heckling from the bleachers and John McCain was running his neocon mouth about a new Russian Empire being born in Georgia. Meh, not so much. No Russian expansion, but certainly a multi-polar world where no-one can be bothered waiting to see if, by some miracle, an American Republican administration will do other than throw a rhetorical warhammer in diplomacy's works. It's what they always do, and it has become ignorably old.