Russia has agreed to pull all of its forces out of Georgia within a month under a landmark deal reached by the president, Dmitry Medvedev, and his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, in Moscow today.
Describing the agreement as "momentous", Sarkozy said Moscow had promised to scrap its checkpoints inside Georgia within "a week" and to remove all forces from areas adjacent to the breakaway enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia within a month.
The deal envisaged the deployment of a 200-strong force of EU observers to Georgia by October 1, Sarkozy said. Additionally, international talks would take place on October 15 in Geneva on the future of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Moscow unilaterally recognised as independent late last month.
Sarkozy, the current EU president, led today's negotiations together with the European commission president, José Manuel Barroso, and the EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana. The deal appears to mark a major achievement for Sarkozy. He had been widely criticised after Moscow's failure to implement his previous August 12 ceasefire deal, which called for Russia to pull its troops out.
"All has not been resolved. We are aware of that. But what has been resolved has been considerable," Sarkozy said, adding that the EU and Russia had avoided "a cold war that we don't need".
In a press conference this afternoon after four hours of talks, Medvedev made clear that Russia's withdrawal of forces depended on Georgia signing a "non-aggression pact" with South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Today's deal does not include Abkhazia and South Ossetia where, Medvedev said, Russia will continue to provide what he termed "military assistance".
Sarkozy is flying tonight to Tbilisi to hold talks with the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, who is expected to agree today's deal.
But there was no agreement today on the future status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Georgia's two breakaway enclaves. Medvedev said Moscow's decision to recognise them as independent was "irrevocable". Sarkozy, for his part, said the EU, which dispatched him to Moscow after an emergency session of all 27 member countries last week, condemned Russia's move.
"It wasn't up to Russia to recognise unilaterally the independence of Russia and South Ossetia. There are international rules which need to be upheld," Sarkozy said.
Medvedev today criticised the US, which, he said, had encouraged Georgia's "aggression" against South Ossetia and its attack on August 8. He made clear Russia would no longer accept a "unipolar model" in international and security relations in which Washington gets to decide "the rules of the game".
Asked whether the Kremlin planned to invade any more of its neighbours, Medvedev looked irritated. Referring to Georgia, he said: "This is an individual situation. Everything else is just plots ... Some people are trying to look at Russia like the Soviet Union. Russia is different. But Russia needs to be taken into account."
David Clark, chair of the Russian Foundation and a former foreign office special adviser, said today that Russia had so far outwitted the EU, which now needed to revise its relations with Russia.
"[Vladimir] Putin has been running rings round the EU for four or five years. He has been able to do it because he has bet on European weakness and disunity. So far his numbers have come up every time. Whether he will continue to be right is the big question for European foreign policy."
Clark said events in Georgia demonstrated that it was no longer possible for the EU to have a value-based relationship with a resurgent Russia, which believed itself a "great power" and thought it had "privileged interests" in post-Soviet countries such as Georgia and Ukraine.
The EU should still consider a raft of sanctions against Moscow, he said. They could include the suspension of a new EU-Russia partnership and co-operation agreement, freezing Moscow's WTO application and a revival of the G7 format excluding Russia.
The EU should consider other more draconian measures, he said, including stripping Russia of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Europe's financial authorities should scrutinise the finances in the west of wealthy Russians, he said. "This is something that will really make them sweat," Clark told the Guardian.
Before today's agreement, the Georgian government said Russia had beefed up the number of checkpoints next to the Black Sea resort of Poti to three, sending in additional armoured personnel carriers and around 50 troops. The strategic port is outside any security zone around Abkhazia or South Ossetia.
Russia sent two jets into Georgian airspace on Sunday, the government said. According to the ceasefire agreement, its forces should have left Georgian "core territory" weeks ago, it added. "The repeated violation of Georgian airspace and the expansion of Russia's checkpoint system far from the conflict zone suggests that the Russian Federation has no intention to honour its commitments."
Georgia and Russia severed diplomatic relations last week. According to Russia's Kommersant newspaper, Moscow plans to establish diplomatic relations with Abkhazia and South Ossetia tomorrow. Officials in Tskhinvali, South Ossetia's damaged capital, are now looking for a building to house the new Russian embassy, the paper said.
The two countries clashed today in the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Georgia says there is "compelling evidence" that Russian forces have been involved in the ethnic cleaning of Georgians from South Ossetia, Abkhazia and adjacent regions. Russia denies the claim. The case is to be heard over three days.
