TBILISI: Russian warplanes yesterday staged bombing raids across Georgia as a conflict over control of South Ossetia widened beyond the breakaway region and Moscow appeared to rebuff a call for truce by Tbilisi.
Georgia’s president declared “a state of war” and the United States led international calls for Russia to halt its military assault.
But Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev said his country would “force the Georgian side into peace” and accused Georgia of causing “thousands of victims.”
Russia backs the separatist government in South Ossetia and sent in tanks and troops on Friday in response to pro-Western Georgia’s military campaign to take back the province, which broke away in the early 1990s.
Georgia said a Russian air raid had “completely devastated” the Black Sea port of Poti in attacks that the country’s UN ambassador likened to “a full-scale military invasion.”
This was followed up with bombings of Gori, the Georgian city closest to South Ossetia and a town near the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline — the world’s second longest — which Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze told Georgian television was “miraculously” not damaged.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili told CNN his country was ready to “cease fire immediately, provided the other side stops to shoot and to bomb,” and accused Moscow of war crimes against his people.
But Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who arrived yesterday in the city of Vladikavkaz, close to Russia’s border with Georgia, to deal with an influx of refugees from South Ossetia, adopted a confrontational tone.
“From a legal point of view our actions are absolutely well-founded and legitimate and moreover necessary,” Putin said, blasting Georgia’s “criminal” leadership.
Georgia, a close US ally, said it would withdraw its 2,000 troops backing US forces in Iraq and the army faced new pressure when the Russian-backed separatist administration in another region, Abkhazia, said they had begun a military operation against Georgian troops.
Abkhazia’s self-styled foreign minister Sergei Shamba said the attacks on Georgian troops were in the Upper Kodori Gorge, a Georgian-controlled part of the region. Saakashvili earlier declared a 15-day state of war, a form of martial law, which was approved by Parliament.
Georgian and South Ossetian rebel forces made rival claims to control Tskhinvali, but Russia said it had “liberated” South Ossetia’s main city after airlifting paratroopers. The United States and the European Union prepared a joint delegation to seek a cease-fire. US President George W. Bush cut into his engagements during a visit to Beijing to call for an end to Russian bombing.
