Bush Slams Russia Over Georgia Conflict
President Bush on Monday warned of a "dramatic and brutal escalation" of violence by Russia in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. He pressed Moscow to accept an immediate cease-fire and to pull back its troops.
Bush put the crisis at the top of his agenda as he returned from the Olympic Games in Beijing.
In a Rose Garden statement, he said there appeared to be an attempt by Russia to unseat Georgia's pro-Western president, Mikhail Saakashvili.
He demanded an immediate cease-fire, the withdrawal of Russian troops from the conflict zone and a return to the status quo as of Aug. 6.
Russia has ignored calls for a truce and has responded with overwhelming military force. It appeared Bush had little leverage to win Moscow's compliance.
Bush said the military crackdown has "substantially damaged Russia's standing in the world. And these actions jeopardize Russia's relations with the United States and Europe. It is time for Russia to be true to its word and to act to end this crisis."
On Monday, Russian armored vehicles rolled deep into western Georgia, quickly taking control of several towns and a military base and slicing open a damaging second front in Russia's battle with Georgia. Other Russian forces captured the key central city of Gori.
Fighting also raged Monday around Tskhinvali, the capital of the separatist province of South Ossetia. Swarms of Russian planes launched new raids across Georgia, with at least one sending screaming civilians running for cover.
The invasions of Gori and the towns of Senaki, Zugdidi and Kurga came despite a top Russian general's claim earlier Monday that Russia had no plans to enter Georgian territory. By taking Gori, which sits on Georgia's only east-west highway, Russia has the potential to effectively cut the country in half.
Alex Rossi, of CBS News partner Sky News, told CBS' The Early Show that the city of Gori was bombed early Friday, and that some civilian locations were hit.
Rossi said fighting around the capital city of South Ossetia had largely quieted Friday and that Russian troops appeared to be fully in control of the breakaway region, leaving Georgian forces to retreat and take up defensive positions.
Security Council head Alexander Lomaia said Monday it was not immediately clear if Russian forces would try to advance on Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. Georgia sought at urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Counil in New York - the fifth meeting on the subject in as many days.
Also, the U.S. State Department said it has evacuated more than 170 U.S. citizens from Georgia as the conflict over separatist areas there intensifies between Georgia and Russia.
A spokesman said Monday that two convoys carrying about 170 private U.S. citizens along with an undetermined number of family members of American diplomats based in Georgia have left Tbilisi on their way by road to neighboring Armenia.
The two-front battlefield was a major escalation in the conflict that blew up late Thursday after a Georgian offensive to regain control of the separatist province of South Ossetia. Even as Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili signed a cease-fire pledge Monday with EU mediators, Russia flexed its military muscle and appeared determined to subdue the small U.S. ally that has been pressing for NATO membership.
Russian armored personnel carriers moved into Senaki, a town 20 miles inland from Georgia's Black Sea port of Poti, Lomaia said. Russian forces also moved into Zugdidi, near Abkhazia, and seized police stations, while their Abkhazian allies took control of the nearby village of Kurga, according to witnesses and Georgian officials.
In Zugdidi, an AP reporter saw five or six Russian soldiers posted outside an Interior Ministry building. Several tanks and other armored vehicles were moving through the town but the streets were nearly deserted, with shops, restaurants and banks all shut down.
Georgia borders the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia and was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Both provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have run their own affairs without international recognition since fighting to split from Georgia in the early 1990s - and both have close ties with Moscow.
Georgia began an offensive to regain control over South Ossetia late Thursday with heavy shelling and air strikes that ravaged South Ossetia's provincial capital of Tskhinvali.
"There is no question that Georgia started this conflict with an offensive against the separatists of South Ossetia because its entry to NATO required a resolution to the problem, but the disproportiate and continuing military attacks by Russia appears to have united the European Union and the U.S. in a call for the removal of Russian troops," said CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk.
"The fighting has now created a major refugee crisis that is spilling over to regional states," Falk added, "and a political crisis with fears that Russia is trying to overthrow the democratically-elected, pro-Western government of Georgia."
The Russia response was swift and overpowering - thousands of troops that shelled the Georgians until they fled Tskhinvali on Sunday, and four days of bombing raids across Georgia.
Yet Georgia's pledge of a cease-fire rang hollow Monday. An AP reporter saw a small group of Georgian fighters open fire on a column of Russian and Ossetian military vehicles outside Tskhinvali, triggering a 30-minute battle. The Russians later said all the Georgians were killed.
Another AP reporter was in the village of Tkviavi, 7.5 miles south of Tskhinvali inside Georgia, when a bomb from a Russian Sukhoi warplane struck a house. The walls of neighboring buildings fell as screaming residents ran for cover. Eighteen people were wounded, six of them seriously.
Georgian artillery fire was heard coming from fields about 200 meters away from the village, perhaps the bomber's target.
Hundreds of Georgian troops headed north along the road toward Tskhinvali, pocked with tank regiments creeping up the highway into South Ossetia. Hundreds of other soldiers traveled via trucks in the opposite direction, towing light artillery weapons.
In the city of Gori, where artillery fire could be heard, Georgian soldiers warned locals that Russian tanks were approaching and advised them to leave. Hundreds of terrified residents fled toward Tbilisi using any means of transport they could find. Many stood along the road trying to flag down passing cars.
U.S. President George Bush and other Western leaders have sharply criticized Russia's military response as disproportionate and say Russia appears to want the Georgian government overthrown. They have also complained that Russian warplanes - buzzing over Georgia since Friday - have bombed Georgian oil sites and factories far from the conflict zone.
The world's seven largest economic powers urged Russia to accept an immediate cease-fire Monday and agree to international mediation. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her colleagues from the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations spoke by telephone and pledged their support for a negotiated solution to the conflict.
Mr. Bush and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin traded sharp barbs Monday.
"I've expressed my grave concern about the disproportionate response of Russia and that we strongly condemn the bombing outside of South Ossetia," Mr. Bush told NBC Sports.
Putin criticized the United States for viewing Georgia as the victim, instead of the aggressor, and for airlifting Georgian troops back home from Iraq on Sunday.
"Of course, Saddam Hussein ought to have been hanged for destroying several Shiite villages," Putin said in Moscow. "And the incumbent Georgian leaders who razed 10 Ossetian villages at once, who ran elderly people and children with tanks, who burned civilian alive in their sheds - these leaders must be taken under protection."
A Russian official said at least eight U.S. transport planes delivered about 800 Georgian servicemen from Iraq.
The Georgian president, Saakashvili, signed a cease-fire pledge Monday proposed by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and his Finnish counterpart, Alexander Stubb. The EU envoys were heading to Moscow to try to persuade Russia to accept the cease-fire.
Saakashvili, however, voiced concern that Russia's true goal was to undermine his pro-Western government. "It's all about the independence and democracy of Georgia," he said during a conference call.
Saakashvili said Russia has sent 20,000 troops and 500 tanks into Georgia. He said Russian warplanes were bombing roads and bridges, destroying radar systems and targeting Tbilisi's civilian airport. One Russian bombing raid struck the Tbilisi airport area only a half hour before the EU envoys arrived, he said.
Another hit near key Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which carries Caspian crude to the West. No supply interruptions have been reported.
Abkhazia's separatists called out the army and reservists Sunday and declared it would push Georgian forces out of the northern part of the Kodori Gorge, the only area of Abkhazia still under Georgian control.
Before invading western Georgia, Russia's deputy chief of General Staff Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn demanded Monday that Georgia disarm its police in Zugdidi, a town just outside Abkhazia. Still he insisted "We are not planning any offensive."
At least 9,000 Russian troops and 350 armored vehicles were in Abkhazia, according to a Russian military commander.
Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said more than 2,000 people had been killed in South Ossetia since Friday, most of them Ossetians with Russian passports. The figures could not be independently confirmed, but refugees who fled Tskhinvali over the weekend said hundreds had been killed.
Many found shelter in the neighboring Russian province of North Ossetia.
"The Georgians burned all of our homes," said one elderly woman, as she sat on a bench under a tree with three other white-haired survivors. "The Georgians say it is their land. Where is our land, then?"