"Republic braces for refugees; Thousands set to return home as Russians leave" by Michael Schwirtz, New York Times News Service | August 24, 2008
TBILISI, Georgia - Russian forces remain entrenched deep inside Georgia, maintaining checkpoints several miles from Gori close to the South Ossetian border and two observational posts near the Black Sea port city of Poti.
Though Poti is outside the Russian-controlled buffer zone, General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the Russian military's general staff, said yesterday that Russian troops would continue to patrol the city.
"Poti is not in the security zone," Russia's Ria news agency reported Nogovitsyn as saying. "But that doesn't mean that we will sit behind the fence and watch as they drive around in Hummers," he said in reference to the US Marine Corps Humvees confiscated by Russian troops from Poti's commercial port last week.
Thousands of Georgian protesters took to the streets of Poti yesterday, waving Georgian flags and urging the Russians to leave, news services reported. Russian officials insist that peacekeeping agreements that ended fighting in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the 1990s allow for the creation of security zones.
A protest the MSM decides to reference, I see.
The Kremlin is also preparing to recognize the independence of the two separatist enclaves, further clouding the diplomatic atmosphere.
I like that idea!!
There are also some ethnic Ossetians among the refugees.
What, you just discover them, Zio-media?
They might as well be Palestinian for all the attention you have given them during Georgia's mass-murder spree!
--more--"
