Russian president Dmitri A. Medvedev announced Monday that Russia had agreed to withdraw its troops by mid-October from its positions in Georgia outside the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. But Mr. Medvedev said Russia would stand by its decision to recognize the two breakaway regions as independent nations.

The Bush administration must keep up the pressure on Russia to withdraw its remaining troops from Georgia and permit deployment of neutral peacekeepers. At the same time, the administration — which allowed this crisis to get out of hand — must be careful not to incite more conflict or give the Kremlin any more excuses.

Georgia is already drawing up lists of options, including restoring the military to its prewar strength or making it a much larger force with more modern equipment, like air-defense systems, modern antiarmor rockets and night-vision devices. So far the Bush administration has avoided publicly discussing how best to rebuild the Georgian military.

Dmitri A. Medvedev speculated that the war in Georgia was intended to benefit one of the candidates in the American presidential election, almost certainly a reference to Senator John McCain. He said the United States armed Georgia and then “gave Mr. Saakashvili carte blanche for any actions, including military ones.”

In tones that seemed alternately angry and mischievous, the Russian Prime Minister suggested that the Bush administration may have tried to create a crisis that would influence American voters in the choice of a successor to President Bush.

Flanked by two Russian flags, President Dmitry Medvedev announced he had signed decrees recognising the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two regions at the heart of the conflict that erupted this month in Georgia. “This is not an easy choice, but it is the only way to save the lives of people,” Mr. Medvedev said in a nationally-televised address.

The military redeployment indicates that despite the French-brokered cease-fire framework that Russia accepted, it is striving to maintain considerable economic and military pressure on Georgia, a close ally of the United States. The ultimate goal, it seems, is the ouster of its pro-Western president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

A ceasefire continued to hold and President Dmitry Medvedev assured his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy that Russian regular forces “from tomorrow … will begin withdrawing,” the Kremlin said. However, new tensions gathered over Russia’s longer term military plans in the fervently pro-Western ex-Soviet republic.

The deal obliges all forces in Georgia, a former Soviet republic, to withdraw to positions held prior to the Russian invasion. However, Russian troops - which routed Georgia’s small US-trained army in the fighting for control of South Ossetia - have the right to patrol “a few kilometres” deeper inside Georgia beyond the South Ossetia conflict zone.

Georgia’s pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili announced he had signed the EU-brokered ceasefire during a visit to Tbilisi by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “With the signing of this accord, all Russian troops, and any paramilitary and irregular troops that entered with them, must leave immediately,” Rice said in Tbilisi.