Saakashvili, who wants to make Georgia part of NATO, into sparking the conflict. In turn, Russian officials said that ties to the United States had emboldened Mr. Soldiers from South Ossetia, a breakaway Georgia enclave, on Thursday near Tskhinvali, where heavy fire was reported. Georgian officials said 12 Russian jets were bombing the area, shortly after a Western official said United Nations peacekeepers had withdrawn from the area at the request of Abkhazia’s de facto government. Russia appeared to be opening a second front in Abkhazia, to the west of South Ossetia, and to be aiming to drive Georgian troops from the Kodori Gorge, a small mountainous area in Abkhazia that Georgia reclaimed by force in 2006. We have entered a totally new realm politically, legally and diplomatically.” “Russia has launched a full-scale military operation, on air, land and sea. “The record is crystal clear,” said a Western official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Other Western officials monitored the movements with alarm. Cristina Gallach, a spokeswoman for Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said that the Union’s immediate objective was to reach a cease-fire, and European envoys were reported to be en route to the region. Senior European Union officials were adamant on Saturday that both Russia and Georgia were to blame for the recent escalation of the conflict, and that finger-pointing was counterproductive. Georgian officials said their only way out of the conflict was for the United States to step in, but with American military intervention unlikely, they were hoping for the West to exert diplomatic pressure to stop the Russian attacks. The United Nations Security Council was meeting Saturday to discuss the crisis, but with no resolution. The East and West were stuck in diplomatic impasse, even as reports of heavy civilian casualties indicated that the humanitarian toll was climbing. Western influence over Russia appeared minimal.
The fighting, and the Kremlin’s confidence in the face of Western outcry, had wide international implications, as both Russian and Georgian officials placed it squarely in the context of renewed cold war-style tensions and an East-West struggle for regional influence. Each side’s figures were impossible to confirm independently, as was an earlier claim released by South Ossetians and repeated by some Russian officials that 1,500 people had been killed in the territory.
Another Georgian official said at least 800 people, almost all of them civilians, had been injured. Georgia’s health minister said that more than 80 people had been killed, including 40 civilians who died in airstrikes in Gori, a city north of Tbilisi. Putin said that dozens of people had been killed in South Ossetia and hundreds wounded, and tens of thousands were reported to be fleeing. The Georgian city of Gori after Russian air attacks on Saturday.
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