Russian troops begin withdrawing from Georgia

Russia has started to withdraw troops from the conflict zone in Georgia in accordance with a French-brokered peace plan, Col-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn of the General Staff said on Monday.

"The pull-out of peacekeeping forces started today," he told a daily official briefing.

Meanwhile, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned on Monday that any further aggression against Russian citizens would face a "crushing response."

"If anyone thinks that they can kill our citizens and escape unpunished, we will never allow this. If anyone tries this again, we will come out with a crushing response," Medvedev told World War Two veterans in the Russian city of Kursk.

"We have all the necessary resources, political, economic and military. If anyone had any illusions about this, they have to abandon them," Medvedev said.

Russian troops with armored cars manned checkpoints along the road to the key Georgian city of Gori on Monday morning, ahead of the promised withdrawal from parts of the country.

Russian soldiers in hard helmets standing next to a chicane of concrete blocks checked the boots of cars and asked drivers for identification documents. Further along the road, armored vehicles, trucks and tanks stood in orderly fashion in fields, covered by camouflage tarpaulin.

Alexander Lomaia, secretary of Georgia's National Security Council, said he had passed 16 Russian checkpoints on the 130 kilometer stretch of road between the capital Tbilisi and the central Georgian town of Khashuri, west of Gori.

"The Russian general [Vyacheslav Borisov] promised last night to start the pullout at 10 A.M., but so far there is no sign," he told Reuters on the main highway to Gori.

The Kremlin has announced Russian troops will start pulling back on Monday but has not given a specific time.

Gori commands the country's major east-west highway and rail link as well as the approaches to the Russian-backed South Ossetia region that was the focus of a 10-day conflict. It will be central to the withdrawal promised by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Medvedev announced on Sunday that Moscow's troops would start withdrawing under a French-brokered ceasefire to end the fighting. French leader Nicolas Sarkozy quoted Medvedev as saying the pullout would begin at midday Monday but the Kremlin has not confirmed a specific time.

The Gori road bears the signs of 10 days of fighting and Russian military movements, the sun-baked asphalt churned up in places by the passage of tanks. Hills rise up in the distance, beyond fields of low shrubbery.

A ragged dog sniffed at discarded Russian army ration tins and plastic bottles at the side of the Gori road. Heavy trucks, armored cars and tanks rumbled by in both directions, their destinations unclear.

Georgian television showed film of Russian troops and armour moving out of the western town of Senaki in the direction of Abkhazia, a second breakaway region. It was not immediately clear if this was a part of an overall withdrawal or one of manymovements since Russian troops stormed into Georgia.

A Reuters correspondent saw trucks from Senaki arriving at nearby Khobi close to the boundaries of a second breakaway region, Abkhazia. Asked if his unit was withdrawing, a soldier replied: "We have no orders yet."

The Russia-Georgia conflict began on August 7 when Georgia launched an attempt to retake South Ossetia, which broke with Tbilisi after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia struck back, pouring troops into South Ossetia and then occupying areas beyond the separatist region in central and western Georgia.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili urged the Kremlin to discuss ways to avoid "discord for future generations" as Russian troops prepared to pull out of the Black Sea state on Monday.

Saakashvili's comments, in a televised address, contrasted sharply with recent descriptions of the Kremlin as "21st century barbarians", looters and thieves and his accusations of ethnic cleansing in the pro-Russian breakaway region of South Ossetia.