A ranking Russian military official today said Moscow plans to establish 18 long-term checkpoints inside Georgian territory, including at least eight within undisputed Georgian territory outside the pro-Russian enclave of South Ossetia.
"The president ordered us to stop where we were," he said. "We are not pulling out and pulling back troops behind this administrative border into the territory of South Ossetia."
The plans appear to violate the terms of a French-endorsed cease-fire deal signed late last week by the presidents of Georgia and Russia. It called for both countries' troops and allied armed groups to move back to their positions before hostilities between the two countries' troops led to a Russian military incursion early this month into the staunchly pro-U.S. Caucasus Mountain nation.
Russian officials insist they may keep troops along the South Ossetian-Georgian border as well as within Georgia proper as part of a peacekeeping mission begun in the 1990s.
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