Pat Dollard

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The last Russian military vehicles leave a checkpoint on the highway to Gori, Georgia, Friday, Aug. 22, 2008

IGOETI, Georgia – Russian military convoys rolled out of three key positions in Georgia and headed toward Moscow-backed separatist regions Friday in a significant withdrawal two weeks after thousands of troops roared into the former Soviet republic.

In Moscow, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said the pullback into separatist South Ossetia was finished late Friday—but the United States and France were less than impressed.

“( The Russians) have without a doubt failed to live up to their obligations,” U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood said in Washington. “Establishing checkpoints, buffer zones are definitely not part of the agreement.”

“Russia is not in compliance and Russia needs to come into compliance now,” Gordon Johndroe, the White House spokesman, told reporters after President Bush spoke by telephone form his ranch in Crawford, Tex., with the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, who helped negotiate the agreement.

Russia may still use its hold on the main transport and trading routes to keep a headlock on the whole country, possibly applying economic and military pressure toward its strategic aims in the region and an ultimate goal of unseating Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

Outside Poti, Russian troops were seen digging large trenches Friday morning near a bridge that provides the only access to the city. Five trucks, several armored personnel carriers and a helicopter were parked nearby. Another Russian position was seen in a wooded area outside the city.

The mayor of Poti, Vano Saginadze, said late Friday that two Russian roadblocks remained in or near the city. Poti is far from any zone that Russian troops could be allowed to be in under the cease-fire.

Georgia’s state minister on reintegration, Temur Yakobashvili, told The Associated Press the formation of a buffer zone outside South Ossetia “is absolutely illegal.”

In South Ossetia, whose capital Tskhinvali suffered the most in fighting, Russian troops were clearly establishing a long-term presence, erecting 18 peacekeeping posts in a so-called “security zone” around the border with Georgia.

Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy head of Russia’s general staff, said Friday the move was aimed at preventing looters and Georgian arms smugglers. He said Russia still expected Georgia to try future military offensives in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, where another further 18 peacekeeping posts are to be set up.

The heavily armed soldiers that Russia calls peacekeepers have been working closely with regular Russian troops and their separatist allies against Georgian forces. A total of 2,142 Russian peacekeepers are to be deployed on the Abkhazia de facto border, while 452 will man the South Ossetia de facto border, Nogovitsyn said.

In western Georgia, a column of 83 tanks, APCs and trucks hauling artillery moved away from the Senaki military base north toward the border of Georgia’s breakaway Abkhazia region on Friday afternoon. Georgian police said the vehicles came from the base, which has been under Russian control for more than a week.

In central Georgia, at least 40 Russian military vehicles left the strategic crossroads city of Gori, heading north toward South Ossetia and Russia. Gori straddles the country’s main east-west highway south of South Ossetia, the separatist region at the heart of the fighting. After Russian forces left Gori, cranes began dismantling a Russian checkpoint.

An Associated Press reporter in Igoeti, meanwhile, confirmed that Russian forces had pulled up from their former checkpoints and roadside positions around the village. Igoeti, on the road between Gori and the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, had been the Russians’ closest position to the Georgian capital.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had promised to have his troops out of Georgia by Friday—but a top Russian general later amended that prediction, saying it could take at least 10 days before the bulk of Russian troops and hardware could be withdrawn.

Under an EU-brokered cease-fire deal, Russian forces are to pull back to positions they held before the fighting erupted, and Western leaders have called for a complete withdrawal from Georgia. But Russia says it will keep troops it calls peacekeepers in South Ossetia and Abkhazia as well as in buffer zones stretching into Georgia proper.

(Agencies)