"I have taken the decision to end the operation to force
Georgian authorities into peace," Dmitry Medvedev was quoted
as saying.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Boris Malakhov confirmed
the order to Sky News.
Sky News chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay, speaking from
Tibilisi, said the Russians had probably achieved their goal
of pushing Georgian forces far enough back inside their
borders to prevent further attacks on the rebel province of
South Ossetia.
"If the Russians say it's over, it's over," he said.
"This is pretty good news. It means the military phase is
over although there's an awful lot of wrangling that needs
to take place."
The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, welcomed the
announcement and called for a timetable to return all sides
to the positions they occupied before hostilities started.
This moment was taken as an important global event which
drew worried attention from around the world. Fortunately,
the war was mercifully short. The formal GCP event was set for a
three hour period roughly corresponding to or encompassing
the announcement that the operation had ended. Chisquare is
10730.048 on 10800 df, for a p-value of 0.625 and Z =
-0.318. The trend is thus opposite to prediction.
