MOSCOW, Russia -- Russian forces in Georgia will withdraw to a buffer zone by Friday evening -- two weeks after the initial invasion -- according to the deputy chief of staff of Russia's armed forces.
"By the end of the 22nd, we will pull back to the checkpoints line," Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn said Thursday at a daily military briefing in Moscow, according to a translation by Russia Today TV station.
Russia and Georgia signed a cease-fire agreement last weekend that allows Russian forces to establish a buffer zone inside Georgia within a few kilometers of South Ossetia, a pro-Moscow breakaway republic.
Russian peacekeepers have been stationed in South Ossetia for more than a decade under international agreements.
Nogovitsyn noted that only Russian armed forces can perform peacekeeping duties in the Georgia-South Ossetian conflict zone.
Russia's incursion into the former Soviet republic followed the launch of a Georgian campaign against the Russian-backed separatist territory of South Ossetia on August 7.
Russian tanks, troops and armored vehicles poured into South Ossetia and another breakaway Georgian territory, Abkhazia, the following day, advancing into Georgian cities across the administrative borders with those regions.
Top Russian officials repeatedly have said their troops are pulling back in accordance with the French-brokered cease-fire.
But U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that Russian forces remain in Georgian cities, and that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev "is beginning to sound like a broken record."
"First his troops are going to be out on Monday. Then his troops were going to be out on Wednesday. Now his troops are going to be out on Friday," Rice said.
"I'm beginning to wonder if the Russian president is ever going to keep his word, or can he keep his word, or what's going on there."
In addition, Rice said, the world's leading industrial powers are not likely to meet with Russia as the Group of Eight in the near future.
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