President Dmitry Medvedev announced yesterday, August 17, that Russia is to begin pullout of its troops today. The announcement came at a press briefing following a meeting with French President Sarkozy. As the self-imposed deadline approached, reports of continuing looting and abuse kept pooring in from Georgia. There have been complaints from aid agencies and the EU that aid delivery is being obstructed by Russian forces.

As the Russian intervention seems to be finally coming to an end, the international community is considering the appropriate framework for dealing the post-conflict reconstruction and stabilization efforts. The EU has announced last Wednesday, after the European Council ministerial meeting, that it is willing to deploy personnel on the ground in Georgia. French FM Kouchner has confirmed that several EU countries have expressed their will to provide support for EU Mission. This is a shift in EU policy, as the 27 had previously been reluctant to provide on-the-ground assistance in Georgia. The idea of a EU border monitoring mission had been floated around, but it never quite got off the ground.

While the nature of the EU mission is still fuzzy, it probably won’t be a full-fledged peace-keeping mission. Whatever personnel the EU deploys in Georgia, they probably will be unarmed. What seems most likely is a lighter, less controversial monitoring mission similar to that of the OSCE. The exact mandate of the mission may range from ceasefire monitoring to training police. Given the track record of the EU toward Georgia, any such mission will be radically different from the one deployed in Kosovo, where it had the upshot of consolidating the structures of the separatist region and ultimately facilitating its independence.