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Michael spends the day in Gori, looking for evidence of a troop pullout, and finds none. In fact, tanks smash through a barrier of Georgian police cars with clear disdain for any peace agreement that may have been signed in Moscow.
KYRA
PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Russia says that today it's
begun a withdrawal from Georgia, but hours later
there's no indication that Moscow is keeping its
word.
CNN's Michael Ware is among the Russian troops and
the desperate Georgian civilians, actually, in the
occupied town of Gori.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's already Monday
afternoon on Georgia's eastern front. And the
nominated deadline for Russia's troop withdrawal has
passed. Yet there's no sign here on the eastern front
of the Russian soldiers pulling back.
Indeed, this checkpoint is the furthest line of
Russian advance, 15 kilometers east of the Georgian
city of Gori. Indeed, in some of the Russian
positions in the surrounding hills, there are signs
of the soldiers digging trenches and camouflaging
their tanks and armor with fresh-cut foliage.
Russian withdrawal from Georgia or not, according to
the cease-fire, standing here as dusk approaches in
the Georgian city of Gori, still under Russian
occupation, hundreds and Russian vehicles and their
armors vehicles surround me. In this town square, the
birthplace of Joseph Stalin, a statue looms high
above. At the town hall, desperate Georgians are
registering for food rations as the Russian troops
still maintain patrols and checkpoints around this
city.
While most of the city appears to remain intact, the
destruction wrought by this war can still be seen in
buildings brought down like this one, that, according
to locals, was destroyed by a Russian rocket. The
scars of the war are also seen in the eyes and the
jittery hands of the few Georgians who still remain.
Gori is an almost vacant city, shops, homes and
apartments all shuttered. It is a town of the old and
the infirm and but a few sparse families. Russian
checkpoints still man the streets, like this one over
here, the troopers telling us that they have orders
to withdraw at dusk. Everyone now waits until
nightfall to see whether those orders are carried
through.
Russian armor still firmly inside Georgia as the last
light begins to fade, an act of defiance or a
precursor to departure? Either way, both sides to
this conflict are reluctant to give ground.
Michael Ware, CNN, on the road to Tbilisi.