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Russian President Orders End to Military Operations Against Georgia

By VOA News

12 August 2008

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev says he has ordered an end to military action in Georgia.

Mr. Medvedev announced the move Tuesday, as French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Moscow to push Western demands for a cease-fire.

The reported truce would halt five days of intense Russian air and land attacks that took Russian forces deep into Georgia, in response to a Georgian assault on separatists in its pro-Russian breakaway region of South Ossetia. More than 2,000 people have been reported killed, and analysts say the toll will rise.

In the Georgian capital, President Mikhail Saakashvili said Russian warplanes were continuing attacks on Georgian targets, despite the Russian cease-fire announcement. He also told a huge rally that his country is under foreign occupation, and that it will pull out of the Commonwealth of Independent States - a grouping of ex-Soviet countries.

Mr. Medvedev said Georgia had, in his words, been punished enough for the South Ossetian attacks. Speaking on national television, he said the security of Russian peacekeepers and Russian-speaking civilians in the breakaway regions had been restored. He said Georgia has suffered "very significant losses."

Hours before the reported cease-fire, journalists reported Russian warplanes bombing the strategic Georgian town of Gori. The town is 75 kilometers west of Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, and is the birthplace of former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

In Georgia's republic of Abkhazia, witnesses said a huge Russian military column was moving toward the Kodori Gorge - the only area of Abkhazia remaining under the control of Georgia's central government.

South Ossetia and Abkhazia declared independence from Georgia in the early 1990s.

Georgia says 150 people have been killed in the fighting. Russia says the death toll is at least 1,500. There are no independently confirmed casualty figures.

South Ossetia and Abkhazia declared independence from Georgia in the early 1990s. But Tbilisi says it remains determined to reassert control in both regions.