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Verkhny Zaramag, Russia: Russian military trucks trickled back from across the Georgian border yesterday but no armoured vehicles or artillery passed and there was no sign of the large-scale and rapid pullout demanded by the West.
Germany became the latest Western power to express impatience. A government spokesman in Berlin said there was no tangible evidence of a withdrawal and described the situation as "very unsatisfactory".
Diplomats said Russia appeared to have secured its military objectives and was in no hurry to give ground. It wanted instead to secure maximum advantage from occupying a troublesome neighbour, whose pro-US policies have angered it.
A Reuters correspondent near the Roki tunnel that links Russia with Georgia's rebel province of South Ossetia said about 40 trucks covered with tarpaulin, some apparently empty, crossed the frontier from midday.
"When the troops first entered, this road was a stream of steel for four days - armoured cars, tanks, artillery. Now I am looking at a virtually deserted road," the correspondent said.
A Reuters photographer said that the road from the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali north towards the Roki tunnel had also remained largely empty through the day.
Buffer zone
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who has worked closely in the crisis with his mentor and powerful Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, said on Tuesday that most forces would withdraw to Russia or to South Ossetia by Friday under a French-brokered ceasefire.
Meanwhile, a high-ranking Russian military official said Nato had given signals to Georgia, which aspires to membership, that would only encourage it to try a fresh assault on South Ossetia.
Western powers, working through the United Nations and Nato, have raised pressure on Medvedev to speed up the withdrawal since he announced a halt to military operations in Georgia eight days ago.
Impatience is turning to scepticism over the delays.
"Three times Medvedev has said they are starting the withdrawal and they have not," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was quoted in the International Herald Tribune newspaper as saying. "We cannot accept this kind of blindness, not accepting international law."
Germany's criticism matters because it is Russia's largest trading partner and normally tries to avoid antagonising Moscow.
Forest fires
Moscow denies hand
Up to 280 hectares of forests have been burnt or are alight in Georgia ever since the war began, the WWF said yesterday, warning that key conservation areas were under threat.
In a statement, it called on "all parties capable of helping put out forest fires in central Georgia to work together to extinguish them".
The fires are centred in the Borjomi-Kharagauli area, about 70km west of the strategic city of Gori, some 60km from the Georgian capital Tbilisi.
Georgia's foreign ministry had said that the Borgomi Gorge area had been targeted by Russian helicopters dropping firebombs in a dozen locations. But a Russian defence ministry spokesman was quoted by state news agency RIA Novosti as saying that Russia had "nothing to do with the forest fire in Borjomi", and that they were ready to help the Georgians douse the flames if asked.
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