All-out war threatens as Russians hit Georgia

GORI, GEORGIA - The conflict between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia veered toward all-out war on Saturday as Russia prepared to land ground troops on Georgia's coast and broadened its bombing campaign both within Georgia and in the disputed territory of Abkhazia.

The fighting that began when Georgian forces tried to retake Tskhinvali, the capital of the South Ossetia, a pro-Russian region that won de facto autonomy from Georgia in an early 1990s referendum that was not recognized internationally, appeared to be developing into the worst clash between Russia and a foreign military since the 1980s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, declared Saturday that Georgia was in a state of war and ordered government offices to work around the clock. Moreover, he said that Russia was planning a full-scale invasion of his country.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, eclipsing the authority of President Dmitri Medvedev, left the Olympics in China and arrived Saturday evening in Vladikavkaz, a city in southern Russia just over the border from Georgia that is a military staging area.

Russian armored vehicles continued to stream into South Ossetia, and Russian officials said that 1,500 civilians and 12 Russian soldiers had been killed. A Georgian government spokesman said that 60 civilians had been killed in Russian airstrikes on the city of Gori. The figures were impossible to confirm independently.

Late Saturday, Moscow notified Western governments that it was moving elements of its Black Sea Fleet to Ochamchire, a small port in the other disputed enclave of Abkhazia, a senior Western official said.

The White House on Saturday decried Russia's use of strategic bombers and ballistic missiles in Georgia as a "dangerous escalation" of the hostilities there, but said it will not immediately send an envoy to help mediate the crisis.

With residents of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, in a "panic" amid fears that the city will be bombed, the U.S. Embassy there has been placed on "authorized departure" status, meaning that dependents can leave at U.S. expense, the official said in a conference call.

U.S. to transport troops

The Bush administration is also arranging to transport up to 2,000 Georgian troops back home from Iraq. Georgian forces make up the third-largest contingent in the multinational force in Iraq, after the United States and Britain.

The official said the United States and its European allies were still "working through" a response. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "spoke to several of her European counterparts today," he said. "I'd rather not speculate on steps" they might decide on. "But we need to move very, very quickly," he said.

The official said he did not see "any possibility whatsoever" of the Georgian conflict broadening to include others. "It's a very localized conflict that appears aimed at threatening the democratic experiment in Georgia," he said.

Georgian forces knocked out about 40 Russian tanks around Tskhinvali, said Georgia's deputy interior minister, Eka Sguladze. "Our units are well-equipped with anti-tank rockets, and they thwarted a Russian tank attack," she said.

Meanwhile, the de facto government of pro-Russian Abkhazia asked U.N. peacekeepers to leave their posts in the Kodori Gorge, a small mountainous area that Georgia had reclaimed by force in 2006. The peacekeepers withdrew, and aerial bombardments of the gorge began soon after.

Attending the Olympic Games in Beijing, President Bush directly called on Russia on Saturday to stop bombing Georgian territory, expressing strong support for Georgia.

In China, Bush discussed the fighting with Putin during a lunch at the Great Hall of the People on Friday and again later that evening at the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics. The White House did not disclose the details.

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 influence on Russia's borders.

Georgian officials said their only way out of the conflict was for the United States to step in, but with U.S. military intervention unlikely, they were hoping for the West to exert diplomatic pressure to stop the Russian attacks. The U.N. Security Council was meeting Saturday.

Civilians came under fire on both sides. Georgian troops shelled the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, with heavy artillery. Russian warplanes struck at least five Georgian cities. Witnesses said they attacked a train station in Tsenakhi, two apartment buildings in Gori, and a port area in the Black Sea city of Poti.

Georgian officials acknowledged they were taken by surprise by the intensity of the Russian response. But Russia, too, found itself facing effective resistance from Georgia's anti-aircraft guns. In Gori, people cheered as they watched a Russian pilot eject from an airplane that was shot down.

Georgian officials said that Russian warplanes had attacked the major Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that carries oil to the West from Asia, but that the pipeline had not been struck.