Moscow Says EU Monitors Fully Control ‘Buffer Zones’

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said on October 9 that control of security in the areas adjacent to South Ossetia and Abkhazia had been handed over to the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia. 

He said that Russian forces had fulfilled their commitment on withdrawal “scrupulously” and “in an organized way.”
 
Meanwhile, Mikheil Mindzaev, the breakaway region’s interior minister, said that the situation had been significantly complicated since the withdrawal of Russian forces from around South Ossetia.

“The Georgian side has deployed a great number of its forces, who are acting defiantly. They come near the border with South Ossetia and to the checkpoints located here, trying to provoke an armed clash,” the South Ossetian Press and Information Committee quoted Mindzaev as saying.

He said this was happening in front of international monitors, “whose role remains unclear.”  

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