Russia has begun pulling its troops out of Georgia, according to its military commanders.

The international community had been waiting to see if a pledge by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev would be honoured, after earlier ceasefire agreements were broken.

Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn of the General Staff said: "The pull-out of peacekeeping forces started today."

Meanwhile, President Medvedev warned against any further aggression against Russian citizens.

He told World War Two veterans in the Russian city of Kursk: "If anyone thinks that they can kill our citizens and escape unpunished, we will never allow this. If anyone tries this again, we will come out with a crushing response.

"We have all the necessary resources, political, economic and military. If anyone had any illusions about this, they have to abandon them."

President Medvedev, facing his first international crisis since taking over the Kremlin's top job in May, said: "We do not want a deterioration of international relations, we want to be respected. We want our people, our values to be respected.

"We have always been a peace-loving state. Practically there is not a single occasion in the history of the Russian or Soviet state when we first started military actions.

"We have not attacked anyone, we only secured the rights and dignity of people as peacekeepers."

Russian troops had remained in the city of Gori, which commands approaches to the breakaway province of South Ossetia and the main east-west highway across Georgia, despite repeated calls for the Kremlin to withdraw its forces.

Fighting broke out on August 7, when Tbilisi launched an assault on pro-Russian separatists to regain control of South Ossetia and Moscow ordered a counter-attack that saw tank columns penetrate deep into Georgia.

Nato foreign ministers are meeting this week in Belgium to discuss the alliance's reaction to the conflict.

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