GEORGIA UPDATE….In a development which, at this point, should surprise just about no one, it turns out that Russia doesn’t plan to withdraw from Georgia at all:
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 checkpoints will be staffed by hundreds of Russian troops, with those in Georgia proper needing supplies that would be ferried to them from South Ossetia.
….”This is the essence of it,” Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the army general staff, told reporters at a briefing. He showed maps detailing the proposed Russian positions, one just outside the key city of Gori.
“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.”
An “administrative border.” Nice euphemism there.
