Russian Warships Steam Toward Georgia as Conflict Escalates

By Paul Abelsky and Alex Nicholson

Aug. 10 (Bloomberg) -- 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 Sebastopol and four others from Novorossiysk, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported, without saying where it got the information.

Georgian Economy 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 may be under way.

``Russia has show 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 every 15 minutes 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.

``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 represented a ``a dangerous escalation'' and called for an ``immediate halt to violence.'' Russia demanded a withdrawal of Georgian troops from South Ossetia, an area that 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 from Georgia 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.

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 immediately 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 that two Russian aircraft had been shot down. Georgia has shot down 12 planes, three pilots were captured alive and a fourth was found dead, Lomaia said.

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.

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.

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