Russia, Georgia at brink of war

MOSCOW – Until now, the frozen conflict in Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia has been an obscure row in a faraway land for most in the West. But with Georgia and Russia near war over the tiny mountain enclave, the U.S. may be forced to make tough choices about the breadth of its support for Georgia’s West-oriented government.

As much of the world focused on the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, Georgian troops launched a massive assault on the separatist province Friday to wrest back control of the region, a move the Kremlin answered by sending tanks and troops into the province and allegedly conducting airstrikes on targets in Georgia.

The assault put Georgia, a former Soviet republic strongly allied with Washington and Western Europe, on a collision course with the Kremlin, which for years has firmly backed South Ossetia in its resistance to Georgian authority.

While Ossetian separatist leaders said that hundreds of civilians had died, Russian news agencies reported 10 Russian peacekeeping troops killed and 30 injured in a Georgian artillery attack. Georgian Deputy Interior Minister Eka Zguladze said seven civilians were injured in the Russian bombing attacks on Georgia.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, a U.S.-educated lawyer with strong ties to Washington, accused Russia of provoking Georgia into attacking South Ossetia.

And he indicated that the timing of the attack – with both President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin among the dignitaries visiting Beijing – was no coincidence.

“Most decision makers have gone for the holidays,” Saakashvili told CNN in an interview. “Brilliant moment to attack a small country.”

Saakashvili also announced in the interview that, because of the crisis, Georgia would call home its 2,000 troops in Iraq, now the third-largest contingent in the U.S.-led coalition there. The Kremlin warned Friday that Russia’s response to Georgia’s move on South Ossetia would be swift and decisive.

“We won’t allow the death of our compatriots to go unpunished,” said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who convened an emergency session of Russia’s Security Council.

Though Russia could potentially inflict a heavy toll on its southern neighbor, any major escalation of the conflict could draw in Georgia’s Western allies.

Saakashvili, who took power in 2003 in a peaceful uprising known as the Rose Revolution, has been firmly backed by the Bush administration.

With Georgia and Russia on the cusp of full-scale conflict, any radical military action that the Kremlin takes against Georgia could force Saakashvili’s allies in Washington and Western Europe to react against Moscow, said Archil Gegeshidze, an analyst with the Tbilisi-based Georgia Foundation for Strategic and International Studies.

“I tend to think if Russia escalates the conflict, the West won’t step in militarily,” Gegeshidze said. “But the West still has resources for increasing political and diplomatic pressure on Russia.”

While President Bush’s spokeswoman called Friday for restraint “on all sides,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued a statement calling on Russia to cease attacks on Georgia, “respect Georgia’s territorial integrity, and withdraw its ground combat forces from Georgian soil.”

Rice spoke with Saakashvili as well as with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

A U.S. envoy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matt Bryza, will head to the region with European counterparts to push for a political settlement.

Although military intervention and economic sanctions against Russia are not currently on the table, the U.S. has indicated that it will push Russia as hard as it can diplomatically; privately, officials have called it an “invasion.”

“The conflict has potentially serious implications for Russian-U.S. relations, and Russian-Western relations,” said Dmitri Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Center in Moscow. “The Russians are watching intently what the U.S. will do, as an indication of how the U.S. will pursue its relationship with Russia going forward.”

The harsher fighting erupted when separatist forces began shelling Georgian villages Thursday evening, just hours after Saakashvili called for a cease-fire and resumption of peace talks. Georgian military forces unleashed a barrage of shelling on the province’s capital, Tskhinvali, and by morning, Georgian tanks had entered the South Ossetian capital.

After that assault, three Russian Su-24 fighter jets bombed the Georgian town of Gori and two other villages, Georgian officials said. Georgian authorities later said they shot down two Russian military aircraft, but Russian authorities denied sending any military aircraft into Georgian territory.

Later Friday, a column of Russian tanks and military trucks were moving through South Ossetia on their way to Tskhinvali.

Early today, Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said that the Vaziani military base on the outskirts of the Georgian capital was bombed by warplanes overnight and that bombs fell near the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, the Associated Press reported.

Utiashvili also said that two other bases were bombed and that warplanes bombed the Black Sea port city of Poti, which has a sizable oil shipment facility.