GORI, Georgia (AFP) --- Russia on Monday announced the start of a withdrawal from Georgia, but President Dmitry Medvedev defiantly warned of “shattering” blows against Russia's enemies.

Ten days after Russian forces poured into Georgia, the deputy head of Russia's general staff, General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, said “the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers has begun.”
This was disputed by Georgian authorities who said swathes of their country remained occupied. “We see no signs of a pullout,” the secretary of Georgia's National Security Council, Alexander Lomaia, told AFP.
Lomaia said there were still “dozens” of Russian checkpoints on the country's main road and that troops remained in the northern town of Gori, near the conflict zone of South Ossetia.
The interior ministry also claimed that 12 Russian armored personnel carriers had probed deep into Georgian territory from the central city of Khashuri.
Medvedev was unapologetic in the face of mounting Western criticism, vowing a “shattering” blow against any foreign power that threatened Russian citizens.
“If someone thinks they can kill our citizens, kill soldiers and officers fulfilling the role of peacekeepers, we will never allow this,” Medvedev told a group of veterans in Kursk, Interfax news agency reported.
An AFP correspondent with Russian troops in Gori saw no sign of a concerted withdrawal. Military traffic on the winding road over the Caucasus mountains to Russia moved in both directions.
Georgia's regional development minister, David Tkeshelashvili, told journalists in Gori that just 15,000 of the city's 55,000 inhabitants had returned after the conflict .
Locals told AFP they wanted the Russian troops to leave, although some were grateful to the Russians for ending looting and attacks on civilians that erupted following Russia's rout of the Georgian army last week.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) met in Vienna to decide whether to send more observers to Georgia.
The OSCE agreed in principle last week to boost its monitoring contingent in Georgia from just a few to around 100 observers.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice headed to Brussels for talks Tuesday with NATO allies on the Georgia conflict, which she says has left Moscow's reputation in “tatters.”
Despite the tensions, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili called for talks with Russia to prevent a “definitive estrangement” between the two sides.
In a televised address, Saakashvili repeated his demand for the immediate withdrawal of Russian forces. But he struck a more conciliatory note, saying: “Let's then start thinking, negotiating how can we prevent the definitive estrangement of our two countries.”
“Let's resolve problems through civilized methods,” said Saakashvili.
Russia has faced mounting international calls to withdraw the forces it sent into its neighbor on August 8 to repel a Georgian attempt to take back control of South Ossetia, a Moscow-backed separatist region.
Moscow says it acted to protect its forces acting as a peacekeeping force in South Ossetia and the many people to whom it has given Russian passports.
But Russia's longer-term military plans in the small but strategically located ex-Soviet republic remain a mystery.
Russia plans to deploy a peacekeeping force of unspecified size that Georgian officials worry could turn into an open-ended occupation.
As of Monday troops remained in control of the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia , as well as Georgian towns deep inside the country.
Four explosions were heard by an AFP reporter at an occupied Georgian military base near Senaki in the west. A Georgian official said the Russians were destroying the facility.
Russian troops also kept hold of another base nearby in Teklati. There was no sign the soldiers were preparing to leave.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who brokered the peace agreement, urged withdrawal “without delay” in an article for French newspaper Le Figaro. “This point is not negotiable,” he said.
In another twist, U.S. officials believe that Russia has deployed SS-21 tactical missile launchers in South Ossetia, within range of the Georgian capital, The New York Times reported.
However, Nogovitsyn, the Russian deputy chief of staff, told journalists “there was no need” for such a weapon in the area.
The ceasefire deal was intended to conclude a five-day conflict in which Russian forces drove off a Georgian assault launched August 7 against the South Ossetian separatists.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said Sunday the number of people displaced from the conflict had reached 158,600.