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VIDEO / Georgians try to put their lives back in order, despite Russia presence
By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Russia, Georgia, Putin 

GORI, Georgia - Despite Russia's pledge to begin withdrawing its troops from Georgia on Monday, no pullback preparations were visible as of Sunday afternoon. Russian armored forces did leave the village of Igoeti, some 35 kilometers from the capital Tbilisi, but instead of withdrawing, they dug into camouflaged positions with good views of the country's main road. Convoys of supplies and engineering equipment continued to flow toward these positions.

The Russians also maintained their presence in the city of Gori, though they allowed Georgia's civil authorities to begin organizing food and medical services. The Georgian police were still not allowed to operate in the city. But, five days after taking over, the Russians did finally allow an organized entry of reporters into Gori.

Contrary to previous reports, there were no signs of large-scale destruction or looting in the city, except for a few stores and one bank branch. However, dozens of homes had been bombed from the air. There was a huge crater between two apartment houses near Stalin Square, in the center of town, made by a 1,000-kilogram bomb dropped from a Sukhoi fighter plane.
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Tamara Mediashvili, the curator of the Stalin Museum, which documents the life of the city's most famous son, was putting pieces of cardboard together to cover the shattered windows. She said the damage was done by a bomb that fell in the courtyard of the museum, which also features the house where Stalin was born, covered with a marble dome adorned with the hammer and sickle, and the train car that he used on his travels. It seems as if, 55 years after the dictator's death, Russian soldiers are still afraid to damage his memory.

Inside, the ponderous Soviet grandeur was everywhere, with red carpets, oil paintings and statues documenting events from his life. The museum is presently closed to the public, as are all of Gori's businesses and institutions.

At the entrance to the government building on Stalin Square, where Yedioth Ahronoth reporter Tzadok Yehezkeli was badly wounded four days ago, stood an official of the Georgian Economic Ministry, Avtadeo Irmashvili. He was organizing the reopening of the city's stores. Ten stores and two bakeries have already opened, he said, and the main hospital is also back in operation, though all the patients have been evacuated to Tbilisi over the past few days.

There were no Russian soldiers to be seen in the central square. But they controlled the roads in and out of town, and allowed people to come and go only by the Tbilisi exit. The roads north and west were blocked. Russian soldiers also blocked the roads linking Gori's neighborhoods. They have been searching public buildings and, according to Gori residents, they take whatever they want from food shops.

Dozens of Russian vehicles were parked at both of the town's military bases, and convoys of armored personnel carriers went in and out of the gates.

Georgia's national security advisor, Alexander Lomaia, who is coordinating negotiations with the Russian military commander in the area, said that the Russians were allowing civilian authorities to operate in Gori only minimally. "From a military perspective, they have established a partition in the heart of the country," he said. "They have now bombed the railroad line between the eastern and western parts of the country and cut off all transportation arteries linking Tbilisi with the west."

Until the Russians withdraw from the Gori region, Tbilisi will continue to be threatened. However, there were no signs of a siege in the capital. There were no lines in front of shops, people continued to fix up their homes and businesses, and there were no crowds of people at the airport seeking to flee. Last night's flight to Tel Aviv contained many empty seats.

Nevertheless, the situation in Tbilisi could change quickly. The city has a population of about a million, plus a few tens of thousands of refugees who arrived last week. And the agriculture minister told representatives of aid groups last week that there are already signs of a shortage of flour, as the Russian forces have cut the city off from most of its agricultural hinterland.

Some Georgian government officials believe that food can be brought in across the border with Azerbaijan, or if need by, by shipments from the United States and international aid organizations. But it is not clear how much longer the city can maintain the illusion of its normal high quality of life.

Lomaia said the Russians apparently do not intend to advance their units into the city. Rather, they are trying to bring down the government by cutting it off economically and encouraging political unrest. In the areas they occupied, he charged, they quickly blew up Georgian television and radio transmitters, and on Saturday, they brought Russian transmitters into the heart of the country. Russian broadcasting teams are traveling with the Russian forces and broadcasting stories about Georgian war crimes and in praise of the Russian "peace-keeping" forces.

Of the thousands of Georgian soldiers deployed along the main road to Tbilisi to fend off the Russian advance that never came, all the remains are mounds of garbage and a lone old-fashioned artillery piece, five kilometers outside the capital.

President Mikheil Saakashvili took a giant gamble when, after two days during which the Russian army routed his soldiers in front of his eyes, he ordered his units to fall back and not seek contact with the Russians. Saakashvili apparently believes that if he can maintain order in Tbilisi, his government will survive, even if the rest of Georgia's cities fall to the mercies of Vladimir Putin's soldiers. In the coming days, this assessment will be put to the test.

The Russians are still determined to humiliate Saakashvili and bring him down, and it looks like they will maintain their stranglehold on Tbilisi as long as they can withstand the international pressure. If Saakashvili is still sitting in his office when their tanks withdraw from the Tbilisi-Gori road, and crowds are not sacking the fine stores on Rustaveli Street, he will be able, barely, to chalk up a victory over Putin.

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