(15 Nov 2007) SHOTLIST
1. Various of soldiers around Russian military equipment being loaded on to trains
2. Close of soldier's jacket
3. Wide of soldiers
4. Various of soldiers near train carrying Russian military vehicles
5. Military vehicles on train
6. Close of lock on train compartment door
7. Wide of train
8. Wide of soldiers
++NIGHT SHOTS++
9. Various of train pulling out of station in Batumi
STORYLINE
Russia has withdrawn troops that were based in Georgia since the Soviet collapse, a top Russian general said early on Thursday, according to the Russian ITAR-Tass news agency.
Russian troop presence had long been a source of irritation between Georgia and neighbouring Russia.
The RIA-Novosti news agency cited an army source as saying that the final convoy of troops and equipment, which had been based in Batumi in south-western Georgia, crossed into Armenia just after midnight Moscow time (2000 GMT Wednesday).
Those troops are to be based in the northern Armenian town of Gyumri, the source was quoted as saying.
Russia completed withdrawal of troops from its other base in Georgia, Akhalkalaki, in June and had agreed to close the Batumi operations by October 2008.
It was not immediately clear why Russia chose to complete that withdrawal so far ahead of time.
But the final removal of troops that were based in Georgia as a hangover from the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union would remove another of the more contentious points in Russian-Georgian relations.
However, ITAR-Tass quoted a commander of Russian ground troops as saying that Russian peacekeepers will remain, in two separatist regions of the former Soviet republic.
Calls to the Georgian Defence Ministry for comment went unanswered.
The breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia have been outside Georgian control since the end of wars in the mid-1990s.
Georgian leaders complain that Russian troops in both regions support the separatists, and their continued presence is likely to continue being an issue of hot dispute between Tbilisi and Moscow.
The Russian troops at Batumi and Akhakalakai, and at a base in Tbilisi that was closed in 2006, were the remnants of Soviet forces that suddenly found themselves based in foreign countries when the USSR split into 15 separate countries.
Russia still bases troops in Armenia and established an air base in ex-Soviet Kyrgyzstan after the United States opened a base there in 2001 to support military operations in Afghanistan.
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