10/01/2008
The European Union has started the deployment of 200 observers in Georgia, whose mission will be to supervise the withdrawal of the Russian troops that remain in Georgia.
In August, Georgian forces launched an assault against the rebel region of South Ossetia. Russia went to help the Ossetian and during its counteroffensive entered Georgian territory, and they are still there.
The agreements signed by Russia and Georgia with the French president Nicolas Sarkozy, specify that Russia has to leave Georgian territory before October 10, and that withdrawal will be supervised by the European observers, whose deployment has just started.
Officially, both South Ossetia and Abkhazia are still part of Georgia; Russia is the only country that has recognized the division of those regions. However, in practice, Georgia has no possibility of recovering the control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The Russian are going to stay there, and in fact, the agreement that is being put into practice includes their withdrawal from the territory that nobody questions it is Georgian, but does not include the withdrawal from the two rebel regions.
Russia is not going even to authorize the entry of European observers to those regions, so they will not be able to check what has happened there. On the other hand, European Union’s mission is not permanent, it is nor an interposition force and it is not armed, so it cannot prevent another skirmish between Russia and Georgia.
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