Kommersant, Russia
Dec 15 2006

Tbilisi Free of Russian Military

The Group of Russian Forces in the Transcaucasus dispatched the last
of its property and equipment from Tbilisi suburb of Vaziani to the
102nd Russian Military Base in Gyumri, Armenia, yesterday. There
remain only 13 Russian officers in Georgia now, who are overseeing
the closure of the bases at Batumi and Akhalkalaki. Commander of the
North Caucasus Military District Army Gen. Alexander Baranov told
journalists that eight closed car and 16 open train cars containing
arms and equipment have been dispatched to Armenian.
Today and on December 19, two convoys containing 12 pieces of
equipment each will be sent by road. The personnel of the Tbilisi
garrison will leave next week. The military operational staff of the
Group of Forces will leave Tbilisi on December 25. `There will not be
a single Russian serviceman left in the Tbilisi garrison by the end
of the year,’ Baranov stated. An exception will be the guards at the
Russian embassy in Tbilisi, which was vacated by Russian diplomats
after the October spying incident. The Group of Forces school, where
both Russian children and Georgian children studied, has also been
closed.

The decision on early withdrawal of the Tbilisi garrison from Georgia
was made by Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov in October during
the scandal over the arrest of several Russian officers in Tbilisi
and Batumi on espionage charges. The Tbilisi garrison had previously
been slated for withdrawal by the end of 2008. The base in Batumi
will be closed by the end of next year and the base in Akhalkalaki by
the end of 2008.

Mamuka Panchulidze, a spokesman for the Georgian Ministry of Economic
Development told Kommersant that the large Group of Russian Forces’
building and its grounds in the most exclusive neighborhood in
Tbilisi would be turned over to that ministry and the government
would decide how to put them to use. He said that the facilities may
then be auctioned off. `It could be turned into a five-star hotel,’
he observed. Several construction firms have also expressed interest
i n tearing the building down and putting up new elite housing in its
place.