Georgia’s security council has said that Russian troops appear to be leaving the town of Gori, on the day Moscow had given as its withdrawal date.

Russian soldiers in South Ossetia

There were also reports of a column of 80 Russian military vehicles in the west of Georgia crossing back into the breakaway region of Abkhazia.

However, a top Russian general said hundreds of soldiers would remain deep inside Georgia along the main strategic highway.

As the United Nations again failed to agree on a resolution on the conflict, Russia finally began to withdraw, in line with a French-brokered plan, from the strongly pro-Western ex-Soviet republic.

Troops had poured into Georgia on August 8, initially to repulse a Georgian assault against Moscow-backed separatists in the South Ossetia region, then moving quickly to occupy areas beyond.

More than 2,000 people are thought to have died in the fighting, many of them civilians.

Both sides have accused each other of war crimes.

An international outcry has sent Russia’s already chilly relations with the West into crisis.

Twenty Russian military vehicles carrying hundreds of troops reportedly headed north from near the Georgian city of Gori toward the separatist region of South Ossetia.

US and German onlookers suggested the withdrawal was not going quickly enough.

The top US general in Europe, General John Craddock, said it was “far too little, far too slow”.

Georgia’s National Security Council secretary, Kakha Lomaia, said Russian troops had left the key central town of Gori and were pulling back from some surrounding areas.

But outside the Black Sea port of Poti, over 120 miles west of the main conflict zone, a Reuters photographer reported seeing Russian soldiers using an excavator to dig a trench at a checkpoint guarded by troops and armoured personnel carriers.

US officials regard a Russian withdrawal from the Poti area, where Georgia’s main east-west highway reaches the coast, as a key test of Moscow’s commitment to fulfilling the peace plan.

Moscow has made clear it intends to maintain a substantial “peacekeeping” force in a large buffer zone bordering South Ossetia and a second pro-Russia rebel province in the west, Abkhazia, citing a 1999 agreement.