Security treaties between Russia and South Ossetia and Abkhazia

MOSCOW — Russian border guards on Saturday began taking up long-term positions along the boundaries of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, an arrangement that will probably mean sustained tension in the two breakaway Georgian territories.
Security treaties signed on Thursday in Moscow between Russia and the two territories called for joint patrols in South Ossetia and Abkhazia for an unspecified period along the boundaries that separate the enclaves from the rest of Georgia. The State Department expressed “serious concern” over the arrangement, saying it violated Georgia’s territorial integrity and broke commitments made in a cease-fire agreement reached last fall.
The territories were at the heart of a war last August between Russia and Georgia; the conflict raised tensions between Moscow and the West to a level not seen since the end of the cold war. Heavy Russian armor poured into both territories after Georgia attacked Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. Russia then officially recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as sovereign nations, despite protests from Europe and the United States, and promised to guarantee their security.
Russian troops have been at the territories’ border since August, but the security pact signed on Thursday makes their role formal and permanent. It grants Russia’s border guards, a division of the Russian Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., any land or buildings needed to patrol the area. It also grants Russian border guards many of the rights of Abkhaz and South Ossetian citizens.
In an interview, Abkhazia’s president, Sergei Bagapsh, said 500 Russian border guards — not Defense Ministry troops — would perform joint patrols alongside 300 Abkhazians until Abkhazia could train enough personnel to secure the 60-mile border.
He said Abkhazia had negotiated for some changes to the agreement, among them ensuring that guards at the crossing in the Gali region, which has a large ethnic Georgian population, would be Abkhaz rather than Russian.
“People will be going to the markets; you cannot stop life,” he said. “We don’t want to build a Great Wall of China between Abkhazia and Georgia.”
But Georgian authorities said the move to long-term postings was dangerous. Shota Utiashvili, a senior official in Georgia’s Interior Ministry, said that though Russian soldiers had been staffing checkpoints since August, he worried that F.S.B. units “might be more willing to stage operations” along the Georgian border.
He said Georgian authorities were watching to see how heavily fortified the border would be.
In a statement released on Friday, Georgia’s Foreign Ministry said Russia “once more draws a line between itself and the entire international community, and again brutally tramples on fundamental standards and principles of international law.”