GORI, Georgia (AP) — Russia said its troops had begun withdrawing from the conflict zone in Georgia today, including the strategic central city of Gori, “according to the peace plan” that sought to end fighting has reignited Cold War tensions.

The statement by Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn came amid uncertainty about whether Russia was fulfilling its promise to begin the pullout today. He said troops were pulling back to South Ossetia — the breakaway region at the heart of the fighting — and to an unspecified security zone.

Earlier in the day, Russian forces around Gori appeared to be solidifying their positions.

But Nogovitsyn told a briefing that “today, according to the peace plan, the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers and reinforcements has begun.” He added that forces were leaving Gori, a strategically key city that sits on Georgia’s only significant east-west road.

According to the European Union-brokered peace plan signed by both Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, both sides are to pull forces back to the positions they held before last week’s outbreak of war in the Russian-backed Georgian separatist region of South Ossetia.

Nogovitsyn said the Russian troops were going to South Ossetia and a security zone defined by a 1999 agreement of the “joint control commission” that had been nominally in charge of South Ossetia’s status since it split from Georgia in the early 1990s. Georgian and Russian officials could not immediately clarify the dimensions of the security zone.