Russian Ships Steam Toward Georgia as Conflict Grows

Paul Abelsky and Alex Nicholson
Bloomberg
Sunday, Aug 10, 2008

Russia sent warships from the Black Sea fleet toward Georgia as it stepped up its conflict with the former Soviet republic over the separatist South Ossetia region.

The ships included a vessel based in the naval port of Sevastopol and four others from Novorossiysk, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported, without saying where it got the information. Georgian Economic Development Minister Eka Sharashidze said a ship carrying grain to the Georgian port of Poti was turned away by a Russian warship, suggesting an economic blockade.

“Russia has shown itself capable of crossing every line in this conflict,” Sharashidze said in a telephone interview late yesterday from Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.

Russian jets crossed the border to attack military and civilian targets in as many as six locations simultaneously, Georgian Security Council Secretary Kakha Lomaia said. Russia’s actions amounted to “full-scale war,” he said. Russian planes today bombed a military airfield near Tbilisi, Georgian Security Council secretary Kakha Lomaia said in a telephone interview.

“It’s all going to hell,” Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said yesterday in an interview on CNN in which he appealed for international help. “We are willing to do cease- fire immediately providing the other side stops to shoot and to bomb.”

President George W. Bush said yesterday the fighting was a “a dangerous escalation” and called for an “immediate halt to violence.” The U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory to discourage Americans from visiting the region. Russia demanded a withdrawal of Georgian troops from South Ossetia, which broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s and exists as a de facto independent state with Russian economic support.

Russian Peacekeepers

President Dmitry Medvedev said Russia's actions were a response to Georgia's assault on its citizens as well as the peacekeepers Russia has had in South Ossetia since the disputed region broke away in the early 1990s. Russia has received no official communication from Georgia about Saakashvili's offer of a cease-fire, the Kremlin press office said by telephone.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin flew to Russia's North Ossetia region to oversee a ``humanitarian operation'' as refugees fled from the violence. Putin made the unannounced visit on his return from Beijing, where he had attended the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, the former president's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said by phone.

Putin met Medvedev early today at the presidential residence in Gorki outside Moscow and called for Georgia's military actions to be investigated by the Prosecutor General's Office. The meeting was broadcast on state television.

Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters in New York that 2,000 civilians have died in South Ossetia since the outbreak of hostilities on Aug. 8 and that 30,000 people have fled their homes and crossed the border into Russia.

Churkin, who spoke at the UN after the Security Council failed for the third consecutive day to agree on a position on the fighting, said Georgia's military actions had ``all the elements of genocide and war crimes.''

Putin Comments

Putin said Russia's actions were ``absolutely justified and legitimate and more important, necessary,'' in a meeting with regional leaders in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, broadcast on state television. Putin's ``visit has no military component,'' and will be short, Peskov said.

Russia will discuss a cease-fire ``only if Georgia withdraws all armed forces from the conflict zone and signs a non-aggression pact with South Ossetia,'' Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said on state television today.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has sought support from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and his counterparts in France and Germany, according to an interview with BBC television that was published on the ministry's Web site. He and Rice spoke three times yesterday, the ministry said.

Civilian Casualties

Lavrov said 1,500 civilians and 15 Russian peacekeepers have been killed, while Deputy Chief of the General Staff Anatoly Nogovitsyn said two Russian aircraft had been shot down.

Saakashvili has signed a decree declaring a state of war, Lomaia said. At least 55 Georgians, both civilian and military, have been killed, he said.

The commander of Russian troops in South Ossetia, Lieutenant General Anatoly Khrulyov, was wounded yesterday when a column of armored vehicles moving toward Tskhinvali came under Georgian attack, state television station Vesti-24 reported, without saying how serious his condition was.

EU foreign ministers will meet early next week to discuss ways to resolve the crisis, French President Nicolas Sarkozy's office said in an e-mailed statement from Paris yesterday.

Sarkozy proposed that a solution involve an immediate cease-fire, ``full respect'' for the territorial integrity of Georgia and a return to the situation on the ground that existed before hostilities erupted.

U.S. presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama separately spoke with President Saakashvili and called for the protection of Georgian sovereignty.
``Tensions and hostilities between Georgians and Ossetians are in no way justification for Russian troops crossing an internationally recognized border,'' McCain said in e-mailed statement yesterday.

The military escalation resulted from the ``lack of a neutral and effective peacekeeping force operating under an appropriate UN mandate,'' Obama said in an e-mailed statement, backing the deployment of international peacekeepers in Georgia's breakaway states.

Peacekeeping Mission

Saakashvili, a U.S.-educated lawyer, came to power in the 2003 ``Rose Revolution'' backed by the U.S. He vowed to bring South Ossetia and two other separatist regions under central control in a challenge to Russia.

South Ossetia has a population of about 70,000 and is connected to Russia's North Ossetia region by a tunnel through the Caucasus Mountains. Most residents hold Russian passports.

The conflict could endanger U.S. aspirations to secure an emerging energy corridor linking Central Asia to Europe and deals a blow to its plans for bringing the former Soviet republic into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's orbit.

Azerbaijan halted oil exports through the Georgian ports of Batumi and Kulevi because of the fighting, the head of the state oil company said yesterday, according to Reuters and Agence France Presse.

Georgia is a key link in a U.S.-backed ``southern energy corridor'' that connects the Caspian Sea region with world markets, bypassing Russia. The BP Plc-led Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline to Turkey runs about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali.