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Russia-Georgia War Intensifies
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"There is panic in Tbilisi," said a senior U.S. official, briefing reporters in Washington. He said Russia is using TU-22 supersonic strategic bombers that can carry as much as 54,000 pounds of bombs and cruise missiles. He also said that Russia has launched ballistic missiles against targets in Georgia.
Russian officials were adamant Saturday that they were striking only targets associated with what they described as Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia, an area patrolled since the early 1990s by Russian peacekeepers.
Putin, returning from the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing, flew to Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia in Russia, where most of the South Ossetian refugees from the fighting have fled.
"Russia's actions in South Ossetia are totally legitimate," Putin said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine of encouraging Georgia to carry out "ethnic cleansing" in South Ossetia.
Russian news agencies reported Sunday that Putin and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev held a pre-dawn meeting outside Moscow, after which Putin announced that the government was ready to earmark up to $425 million for aid to South Ossetia. Medvedev said he was ordering the military prosecutor to document crimes against civilians in South Ossetia, the Associated Press reported.
The desire of the leadership in both Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO has infuriated the Kremlin, which regards any further expansion of the Western military alliance as a threat to its security.
"Georgia's aspiration to join NATO . . . is driven by its attempt to drag other nations and peoples into its bloody adventures," Putin said in Vladikavkaz.
Medvedev told Bush in a telephone call that there will be no talks with Tbilisi until Georgian troops withdraw from the conflict zone.
Ossetians are an ethnic group separate from the country's dominant Georgians. Both are Christian, but each has its own language, culture and sense of history.
The parties disagree over who began the escalation. Saakashvili said he ordered his forces in only after Russian troops crossed into South Ossetia in large numbers. Russia says Georgia escalated the standoff by crossing the unrecognized frontier in an effort to regain control of the disputed territory.
"Whatever part of Georgia is used for this aggression is not safe," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Staff writers Karen DeYoung in Washington, Tara Bahrampour in Tbilisi and Colum Lynch in New York contributed to this report.
