TBLISI, Georgia: The presidents of Georgia and Russia agreed early Wednesday morning to the framework of an agreement that could end the war that flared up here five days ago, though Russian air strikes continued throughout the day and antagonisms seethed on both sides.
Declaring that "the aggressor has been punished," President Dmitri Medvedev announced that Russia would stop its campaign, which was prompted after Georgian troops on Friday entered the separatist enclave of South Ossetia and shelled the capital city.
By 2 a.m. Wednesday morning, Medvedev and his Georgian counterpart, Mikheil Saakashvili, had agreed to a plan which would withdraw troops to the positions they occupied before the fighting broke out.
"The tanks should go," said Saakashvili, emerging from a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who carried the proposal from Moscow to Tbilisi. "I hope they will."
"There was a degree of constructive ambiguity" in the document that allowed the announcement to be made today, said a senior European diplomat, who spoke under condition of anonymity.
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If the agreement takes hold, Russia will have edged back from a confrontation that threatened to draw it into a cold-war-style conflict with Western nations. As things stand, a great goal has already been accomplished: Russia has asserted its ability to wrestle its neighbors to the ground at will, and — if not now, then later — resume its old role as the hegemon of the South Caucasus.
But Medvedev's overtures on Tuesday left the door open to further military action. Russian authorities make no secret of their desire to see Saakashvili tried for war crimes in The Hague.
Medvedev has not called for a withdrawal, and expects Russian peacekeepers to remain in both South Ossetia and another separatist area to the west, Abkhazia. He also authorized Russian soldiers to fire on "hotbeds of resistance and other aggressive actions." As the conflict cools and hardens, the two separatist regions could wind up permanently annexed by Russia.
Western negotiators, who have shuttled between the Georgian and Russian governments for days, said they were optimistic that the crisis was under control.
"Traditionally, we will see a few skirmishes, but frontal attacks and positioning will end," said Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb, the chair of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The talk went on for two hours, and Sarkozy was twice required to call Medvedev to clarify points for that concerned the Georgian president. Saakashvili insisted that, when Russian peacekeepers returned to the disputed territories, the troops should be the same ones previously stationed there – not crack troops swapped in anticipation of fighting. He also insisted that the ultimate status of the two breakaway regions not be subject to negotiation.
Finally, the two made a verbal agreement on the document, which will provide a structure for negotiations and ultimately be signed and registered with the United Nations.
As the news filtered across Georgia, citizens reacted with relief and defiance. At a rally in Tbilisi, a euphoric crowd waved signs that read "Stop Russia," and Saakashvili announced Georgia's withdrawal from the "Russia-dominated" Commonwealth of Independent States.
"I saw Russian planes bombing our villages and killing our soldiers, but I could not do anything, and this will always be with me," he said. "I promise that I will make them regret this."
The presidents of five former Soviet satellite states – Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Poland and – flew into the capital and appeared beside Saakashvili in a show of solidarity.
"I am a Georgian," said Toomas Hendrick, the president of Estonia.
On Tuesday, Medvedev took the lead role, in contrast to previous days when the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, was the dominant public figure in the crisis, even flying to the Georgian border to direct operations.
Early in the day, Medvedev announced the end of Russian military activity.
But sporadic bombings were reported in several locations after Medvedev's announcement.
But in the port of Poti, bombs were heard falling an hour after Medvedev's statement. Shota Utiashvili, Georgia's interior minister, said 22 civilians had been killed during the day, after Medvedev's announcement of a cease-fire. He said that there had been ground attacks in the Kodori Gorge region of Abkhazia, the only part of the breakaway territory that remained in Georgian hands, and that ground forces remained outside the conflict zone in South Ossetia.
"We should all prepare for the worst," Utiashvili said. "What we see on the ground is continued aggression."
By late Tuesday, Georgian forces were evacuated from the gorge, said Shota Utiashvili, a spokesman for Georgia's Interior Ministry.
Russia and Georgia have engaged in heated rhetoric in the five days since their long-running disagreement over South Ossetia and Abkhazia boiled over into open warfare, starting when Georgian troops entered South Ossetia, a separatist region with strong ties to Russia, shelling the capital city of Tskhinvali. Russian troops briefly seized a Georgian military base and took up positions close to the central Georgian city of Gori, raising Georgian fears of a full-scale invasion or an attempt to oust Saakashvili.
On Tuesday in Gori, a bomb landed in Stalin Square — named for the Soviet leader who was born in the city — killing five people. Attack helicopters buzzed through the sky, and ambulances sped through the city. The main road to Tbilisi was completely cleared of Georgian forces on Tuesday, except for broken and abandoned vehicles left behind in the retreat.
Georgia has painted Russia's actions an attempt to recreate the Soviet Union's iron sphere of influence. Meanwhile, Russia has refused to negotiate with Saakashvili until he signs a legally binding agreement to never again use force in the breakaway republics.
Russian authorities have said they would like to bring Saakashvili to a war crimes tribunal in The Hague for Georgian attacks on civilians in the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali.
If Russian and Georgian forces do stand down, international mediators will have to confront a flurry of problems. Will Russian and Georgian troops withdraw to their positions last Thursday, before the latest fighting broke out, or to their positions in 1991, when the dispute over Georgia's enclaves began? Will Georgia sign an agreement with Russia, or with the leaders of the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia?
Who would enforce a cease-fire — the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which currently monitors South Ossetia, or the United Nations, which monitors Abkhazia, or some other international body, like the European Union?
Diplomats have tried to keep the parties to the conflict focused on short-term practical steps — first, a cease-fire; second, allowing humanitarian aid into the conflict zone; and third, withdrawing troops. Only then, Stubb said, would Russian and Georgian officials begin a peace process to address the actual causes of the conflict.
Andrew E. Kramer reported from Georgia and Ellen Barry from Moscow. Reporting was contributed by Thanassis Cambanis from Moscow; Michael Schwirtz from Poti, Georgia; Nicholas Kulish from Tbilisi; and C.J Chivers from New York
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