TBILISI, Georgia — Russia battled Georgian forces on land and sea, reports said late Sunday, despite a Georgian cease-fire offer and its claim to be withdrawing from South Ossetia, the separatist Georgian province battered by days of intense fighting.
Russia claimed to have sunk a Georgian boat that was trying to attack Russian vessels in the Black Sea, and Georgian officials said Russia sent tanks from South Ossetia into Georgia proper, heading toward a strategic city before being turned back.
Russian planes on Sunday twice bombed an area near the Georgian capital’s airport, officials said.
Russia’s military actions in Georgia “must not go unanswered,” Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday in a telephone conversation with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, according to his spokeswoman.
“The vice president expressed the United States’ solidarity with the Georgian people and their democratically elected government in the face of this threat to Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Cheney’s press secretary, Lee Ann McBride, said.
From China, where he is attending the Olympics, Bush said today: “I’ve expressed my grave concern about the disproportionate response of Russia and that we strongly condemn the bombing outside of South Ossetia.”
The violence appeared to show gargantuan Russia’s determination to subdue diminutive, U.S.-backed Georgia, even at the risk of international reproach. Russia fended off a wave of international calls to observe Georgia’s cease-fire, saying it must first be assured that Georgian troops have indeed pulled back from South Ossetia.
International envoys were heading in to try to end the conflict before it spreads throughout the Caucasus, a region plagued by ethnic tensions.
Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Temur Yakobashvili said Russian tanks tried to cross from South Ossetia into the territory of Georgia proper, but were turned back by Georgian forces. He said the tanks apparently were trying to approach Gori, but did not fire on the city of 50,000 that sits on Georgia’s only significant east-west highway.
Russia also sent naval vessels to patrol off Georgia’s Black Sea coast, but denied Sunday that the move was aimed at establishing a blockade.
The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman as saying that Georgian missile boats twice tried to attack Russian ships, which fired back and sank one of the Georgian vessels.
The Georgian government said Sunday that 6,000 Russian troops have rolled into South Ossetia from the neighboring Russian province of North Ossetia and 4,000 more landed in Abkhazia, another breakaway region. The Russian military wouldn’t comment on troop movements.
South Ossetia broke away from Georgian control in 1992. Russia granted passports to most of its residents and the region’s separatist leaders sought to absorb the region into Russia.
Georgia, whose troops have been trained by American soldiers, began an offensive to regain control over South Ossetia overnight Friday, launching heavy rocket and artillery fire and air strikes that pounded the regional capital Tskhinvali. Georgia says it was responding to attacks by separatists.
In response, Russia launched massive artillery shelling and air attacks on Georgian troops.
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.
Thousands of civilians have fled South Ossetia, many seeking shelter in the 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 of the fighting.
She seemed confused by the conflict. “The Georgians say it is their land,” she said. “Where is our land, then? We don’t know.”
The U.S. military began flying 2,000 Georgian troops home from Iraq after Georgia recalled them, even while calling for a truce. Georgia was the third-largest contributor of coalition forces after the U.S. and Britain, and most of its troops were stationed near the Iranian border in southeastern Iraq.
“Georgia expresses its readiness to immediately start negotiations with the Russian Federation on a cease-fire and termination of hostilities,” the Georgian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that it had notified Russia’s envoy to Tbilisi.
But Russia insisted Georgian troops were continuing their attacks.
Alexander Darchiev, Russia’s charge d’affairs in Washington, said Georgian soldiers were “not withdrawing but regrouping, including heavy armor and increased attacks on Tskhinvali.”
“Mass mobilization is still under way,” he told CNN’s “Late Edition.”
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