from nytimes.com

August 20, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Russia Never Wanted a War
By MIKHAIL GORBACHEV
Moscow

THE acute phase of the crisis provoked by the Georgian forces’ assault on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, is now behind us. But how can one erase from memory the horrifying scenes of the nighttime rocket attack on a peaceful town, the razing of entire city blocks, the deaths of people taking cover in basements, the destruction of ancient monuments and ancestral graves?

Russia did not want this crisis. The Russian leadership is in a strong enough position domestically; it did not need a little victorious war. Russia was dragged into the fray by the recklessness of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili. He would not have dared to attack without outside support. Once he did, Russia could not afford inaction.

The decision by the Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, to now cease hostilities was the right move by a responsible leader. The Russian president acted calmly, confidently and firmly. Anyone who expected confusion in Moscow was disappointed.

The planners of this campaign clearly wanted to make sure that, whatever the outcome, Russia would be blamed for worsening the situation. The West then mounted a propaganda attack against Russia, with the American news media leading the way.

The news coverage has been far from fair and balanced, especially during the first days of the crisis. Tskhinvali was in smoking ruins and thousands of people were fleeing — before any Russian troops arrived. Yet Russia was already being accused of aggression; news reports were often an embarrassing recitation of the Georgian leader’s deceptive statements.

It is still not quite clear whether the West was aware of Mr. Saakashvili’s plans to invade South Ossetia, and this is a serious matter. What is clear is that Western assistance in training Georgian troops and shipping large supplies of arms had been pushing the region toward war rather than peace.

If this military misadventure was a surprise for the Georgian leader’s foreign patrons, so much the worse. It looks like a classic wag-the-dog story.

Mr. Saakashvili had been lavished with praise for being a staunch American ally and a real democrat — and for helping out in Iraq. Now America’s friend has wrought disorder, and all of us — the Europeans and, most important, the region’s innocent civilians — must pick up the pieces.
Those who rush to judgment on what’s happening in the Caucasus, or those who seek influence there, should first have at least some idea of this region’s complexities. The Ossetians live both in Georgia and in Russia. The region is a patchwork of ethnic groups living in close proximity. Therefore, all talk of “this is our land,” “we are liberating our land,” is meaningless. We must think about the people who live on the land.

The problems of the Caucasus region cannot be solved by force. That has been tried more than once in the past two decades, and it has always boomeranged.

What is needed is a legally binding agreement not to use force. Mr. Saakashvili has repeatedly refused to sign such an agreement, for reasons that have now become abundantly clear.

The West would be wise to help achieve such an agreement now. If, instead, it chooses to blame Russia and re-arm Georgia, as American officials are suggesting, a new crisis will be inevitable. In that case, expect the worst.

In recent days, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Bush have been promising to isolate Russia. Some American politicians have threatened to expel it from the Group of 8 industrialized nations, to abolish the NATO-Russia Council and to keep Russia out of the World Trade Organization.

These are empty threats. For some time now, Russians have been wondering: If our opinion counts for nothing in those institutions, do we really need them? Just to sit at the nicely set dinner table and listen to lectures?

Indeed, Russia has long been told to simply accept the facts. Here’s the independence of Kosovo for you. Here’s the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, and the American decision to place missile defenses in neighboring countries. Here’s the unending expansion of NATO. All of these moves have been set against the backdrop of sweet talk about partnership. Why would anyone put up with such a charade?

There is much talk now in the United States about rethinking relations with Russia. One thing that should definitely be rethought: the habit of talking to Russia in a condescending way, without regard for its positions and interests.

Our two countries could develop a serious agenda for genuine, rather than token, cooperation. Many Americans, as well as Russians, understand the need for this. But is the same true of the political leaders?

A bipartisan commission led by Senator Chuck Hagel and former Senator Gary Hart has recently been established at Harvard to report on American-Russian relations to Congress and the next president. It includes serious people, and, judging by the commission’s early statements, its members understand the importance of Russia and the importance of constructive bilateral relations.

But the members of this commission should be careful. Their mandate is to present “policy recommendations for a new administration to advance America’s national interests in relations with Russia.” If that alone is the goal, then I doubt that much good will come out of it. If, however, the commission is ready to also consider the interests of the other side and of common security, it may actually help rebuild trust between Russia and the United States and allow them to start doing useful work together.

Mikhail Gorbachev is the former president of the Soviet Union. This article was translated by Pavel Palazhchenko from the Russian.

Mikheil Saakashvili is a war criminal. I doubt he will ever be prosecuted at the Haag.

from www.washingtonpost.com

Russia's Strike Shows The Power Of the Pipeline
By Steven Pearlstein
Wednesday, August 13, 2008; D01

It was surely not lost on Russia's bully in chief, Vladimir Putin, that the oil giant BP decided to shut down the pipeline that runs through parts of Georgia controlled by Russian troops. Indeed, that was one of the aims of the cross-border incursion.

Putin understands better than anyone that oil and gas are the source of Russia's resurgence as a military and economic power and his own control over the Russian government and key sectors of its economy. It is oil and gas that provide the money to maintain Russia's powerful military, along with a vast internal security apparatus and network of government-controlled enterprises that allow the president-turned-premier to maintain his iron grip on the levers of political and economic power.

A little pipeline history: It was just as Putin was coming to power in 1999 that an agreement was reached to create the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. The project would allow Azerbaijan and its production partner, BP, to bypass Russia and transport their newly drilled oil instead through Georgia and Turkey to a port in the eastern Mediterranean.

Because of its control of the only pipeline system linking former Soviet republics with the West, Russia had been able to extract most of the profit from any oil and gas that these newly independent countries could produce. But with BTC, which had the active support of the U.S. and European governments, Russia would lose its monopoly chokehold, opening the way for Western oil companies to make multibillion-dollar investments in the energy-rich Caucasus states.

No sooner was BTC completed, however, than Western officials began exploring the possibility of other pipelines that could reach beyond Georgia and Azerbaijan to Turkmenistan, which was thought to have some of the world's largest gas reserves. Their interest was not only in "energy security" and the prospect of oil riches for Western energy companies, but also in promoting Western-style democracy and free-market capitalism in the former Soviet republics.

In time, much of their efforts focused on a $12 billion project known as Nabucco, named after the Verdi opera, that would take gas across the Caspian sea, through Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, finally reaching a terminal near Vienna. With Europe already dependent on Russia for a quarter of its natural gas, and that number set to rise with construction of a new northern pipeline running under the Baltic Sea to Germany, European leaders were keen to find alternative sources of natural gas. The effort took on greater urgency in winter 2006 after Russia briefly cut off supplies in its gas-pricing dispute with Ukraine.

Nabucco also became a top priority of the Bush State Department -- in particular, of Matt Bryza, a deputy assistant secretary of state, and C. Boyden Gray, a Bush family confidante who was named a special envoy for Eurasian energy, who began actively courting the leaders of Azerbaijan.

Putin, quite correctly, viewed Nabucco as part of a larger campaign by Washington to contain and isolate Russia and limit the expansion of its burgeoning energy empire. With Gazprom, the state gas monopoly, Putin launched his own competing proposal called South Stream to build a new pipeline to the Caucasus.

Suddenly the Russians were offering to pay Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan multiples of what they had previously offered to secure long-term supply deals. They penned an agreement with Italy and its oil company, Eni, to build a pipeline that would run under the Black Sea from Russia to Europe and end up at the same Austrian terminal as Nabucco. And Russian officials offered highly favorable transit agreements, ownership shares and guaranteed gas supplies to secure transit agreements from Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary.

To industry observers like Ed Chow, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Nabucco has always looked more like a diplomats' pipe dream than a viable economic project. Its promoters had not only failed to secure supply and transit agreements but also had yet to identify an oil company eager to champion the project and finance the pipeline. Now, with its successful military incursion, Russia has raised serious doubts in the minds of Western lenders and investors that a new pipeline through Georgia would be safe from attack or beyond control of the Kremlin.

What we've been reminded once again is that Vladimir Putin is perfectly willing to sacrifice the rule of law and the good opinion of others to protect the Russian empire and the energy monopoly that sustains it. The techniques he used to bring Georgia to heel, while more lethal and destructive, have the same thuggish quality as the techniques Putin uses to silence domestic opposition and to expropriate the energy assets of Yukos, Shell and BP.

For the United States and Europe, this ought to be sufficient warning about the folly of extending membership in NATO or the European Union to every one of Russia's neighbors, particularly when they are unwilling to back it up with military action.

But it also is a reminder of the futility of trying to co-opt Putin by offering him a seat at the G-7, membership in the World Trade Organization or the honor of hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics. We may not be willing to send troops to Tbilisi, but at the least we should be willing to deny Russian companies the right to raise capital on Western stock exchanges, extend their pipelines into Western markets or use their energy profits to buy up major Western companies.

Vladimir Putin thinks he has looked into the soul of the West and discovered that we need him more than he needs us. It's time to convince him otherwise.

© 2008 The Washington Post Company

not the first and not the last of the upcoming Age of Energy Wars. Unless we heed Gore and become a non-carbon based economy. I am not holding my breath.

New Cold War?

from antiwar.com

The Real Aggressor
Georgian invasion of South Ossetia sets the stage for a wider war
by Justin Raimondo
August 11, 2008

The anti-Russian bias of the Western media is really something to behold: "Russia Invades Georgia," "Russia Attacks Georgia," and variations thereof have been some of the choice headlines reporting events in the Caucasus, but the reality is not only quite different, but the exact opposite. Sometimes this comes out in the third or fourth paragraph of the reportage, in which it is admitted that the Georgians tried to "retake" the "breakaway province" of South Ossetia. The Georgian bombing campaign and the civilian casualties – if they are mentioned at all – are downplayed and presented as subject to dispute.

The Georgians have been openly engaging in a military buildup since last year, and President Mikhail Saakashvili and his party have been proclaiming from the rooftops their aim of re-conquering South Ossetia (and rebellious Abkhazia, while they're at it). Avid readers of Antiwar.com saw this coming. In a column entitled "Wars to Watch Out For," I wrote:
"As President Mikheil Saakashvili deflowers his own revolution and shuts down the opposition media, he could well try to divert attention away from his political problems by ginning up a fresh conflict with the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are protected by Russian troops and regional militias."

That's what Western reporters aren't telling their readers: the South Ossetians (and the Abkhazians) have had de facto independence since 1991, when they rose up against their "democratic" central government, which had banned regional parties from participating in elections. They beat back the Georgian army, which, nonetheless, inflicted a lot of casualties and damage. A low-level war has been in progress ever since, with Saakashvili and his ultra-nationalist party using the rebels as a foil to divert attention from their repressive domestic policies and Georgia's sad status as an economic basket case. As I wrote way back at the beginning of this year:

"Saakashvili, the great 'democrat,' is busy charging anyone who opposes him with being a pawn of the Russians (and therefore guilty of treason), but the West is calling on him to restore civil liberties – and, in an apparent effort to propitiate his Western benefactors, he has lifted some restrictions and called new elections. Widespread and growing opposition to his strong-arm tactics, even among many of his former supporters, spells political trouble for Saakashvili and his corrupt cohorts, however – and an appeal to Georgian ultra-nationalism (which was always the real ideological motivation of the Rose Revolutionaries) would bolster him in the polls and provide a much-needed distraction, at least from the ruling party's point of view."

What's particularly disgusting is the spectacle of the fraudulent Saakashvili's smug mug all over Western television – the BBC and Bloomberg, for starters – invoking his great love of "democracy" and "freedom" and calling on the U.S. to intervene in the name of supposedly shared "values." What drivel! Up until very recently, Saakashvili has been busy rounding up his political opponents and charging them with espionage, as his police beat demonstrators in the streets. When this happened, even our somnolent media sat up and took notice, but they seem to have forgotten.

Saakashvili uses the Western media as a platform to broadcast his great love for "freedom" and make the case against the Russian "aggressors," comparing the present conflict with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s – and even the bloody 1956 repression of the Hungarians! This is nonsense. Russia is not the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain has long since been melted down for scrap metal, and, if anything, Saakashvili resembles the Hungarian satraps of the Kremlin rather than the heroic freedom-fighters, given his absolute fealty to his foreign masters in Washington, to whom he appeals for help in putting down an internal rebellion.

In any case, it wasn't too hard to have seen this coming a mile away, or to predict the American government's response. As I wrote in "Wars To Watch Out For":
"In the event of an outbreak of hostilities, expect the U.S. to do what they have done for the duration of Georgia's political crisis: proffer unconditional support to Saakashvili. With Russia aiding and giving political and diplomatic support to the Abkhazians and the Ossetians, and the Americans letting loose a flood of military aid to Tbilisi, this could be the first theater of actual conflict in the new cold war."

Which is precisely what has occurred. The United States is denouncing the Russians as aggressors in the UN Security Council and accusing the Kremlin of engaging in a policy of "regime change," in Ambassador Khalilzad's phrase. The Russian response: "regime change" is "an American invention," but, hey, in Saakashvili's case, it might not be such a bad idea.

They have a point. The Georgian strongman is a thug and an opportunist who does an excellent imitation of George W. Bush-times-10: whereas GWB merely implies his political opponents are traitors to the nation, Saakashvili comes right out and says it – then drags them into court on trumped up charges of high treason. GWB has presided over a regime that has legalized torture, but only for foreign "terrorists" (José Padilla excepted). Saakashvili, on the other hand, throws his domestic political opponents – whom he labels "terrorists" – in jail and tortures his own countrymen. Georgia's notorious prisons are chock full of political dissidents. GWB justifies his aggression by invoking "democracy" and the doctrine of "preemption," while Saakashvili doesn't bother with such theoretical niceties, denying his aggression against South Ossetia in defiance of the plain facts.

In short: if you love GWB, you'll love President Saakashvili. Therefore it's no surprise John McCain is portraying the Georgians as the good guys and demanding that Russian troops leave "sovereign Georgian territory" without preconditions or delay. After all, when your chief foreign policy adviser has up until very recently been a paid shill for the Georgian government, what else could we expect? As I've pointed out on a few occasions in this space, Mad John has been spoiling for a fight with the Russians – in the Caucasus and elsewhere – for years, going so far as to travel to Georgia to proclaim his sympathy for Saakashvili's cause.

What's really interesting, however, is how Barack Obama has taken up this same cause, albeit with less vehemence than the GOP nominee. As Politico.com reported:
"When violence broke out in the Caucasus on Friday morning, John McCain quickly issued a statement that was far more strident toward the Russians than that of President Bush, Barack Obama, and much of the West. But, as Russian warplanes pounded Georgian targets far beyond South Ossetia this weekend, Bush, Obama, and others have moved closer to McCain's initial position."

While calling for mediation and international peacekeepers, Obama went with the War Party's line that Russia, not Georgia, is the aggressor, as the Times of London reports: "Obama accused Russia of escalating the crisis 'through it's clear and continued violation of Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity.'" While his first statement on the outbreak of hostilities was more along the lines of "Can't we all get along?", the New York Times notes:
"Mr. Obama did harden his rhetoric later on Friday, shortly before getting on a plane for a vacation in Hawaii. His initial statement, an adviser said, was released before there were confirmed reports of the Russian invasion. In his later statement, Mr. Obama said, 'What is clear is that Russia has invaded Georgia's sovereign – has encroached on Georgia's sovereignty, and it is very important for us to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.'"

This nonsense about Georgia's alleged "sovereignty" rides roughshod over the reality of the Ossetians' apparent determination to free themselves from Saakashvili's grip, and it's the buzzword that identifies a shill for the Georgians.

"I condemn Russia's aggressive actions," said Obama, "and reiterate my call for an immediate cease-fire." This cease-fire business is meant to feed directly into the Georgians' contention that they have offered to stop the conflict, even as they continue military operations in South Ossetia, which have already cost the lives of over a thousand of that country's inhabitants.

That didn't stop the McCainiacs from attacking Obama as a tool of the Kremlin. Sunday the news talk shows were abuzz with rumors of Democratic discontent over Obama's seeming inability to hit back at McCain's viciously negative campaign, yet it's much worse than that – it's not an unwillingness, but an inherent inability to do so. I hate to cite Andrew Sullivan favorably, but he was one of the first to note the convergence of the Obama camp and the McCain campaign on such central issues as Iran, and the process continues with this confluence of opinion on the Russian question. While the Obama people have dutifully pointed out that Randy Scheunemann, McCain's foreign policy guru, earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for his public relations firm as a paid lobbyist for the Georgians, their own candidate's position on the matter differs little from McCain's, except, as the New York Times notes, in terms of "style."

GWB recently assured Saakashvili that he would do his best to get the Georgians into NATO, but the Europeans – particularly the Germans – are balking, and this foray by the Georgian Napoleon into a direct conflict with the Russians seems to confirm their initial reluctance. The Euros are no dummies: they know Saakashvili's recklessness could plunge the entire region into an armed conflict that would resemble World War I in its utter stupidity.

I've written at length about the economic and political interests that stand to profit from a war in the Caucasus, and I won't repeat myself here except to note that the timing of this – with attacking Iran on the War Party's agenda – should alert us to the importance of what is happening. Russia has not only been opposed to Iran's victimization at the hands of the West, but Putin and his successor have taken up Tehran's cause, selling arms and technology to the Iranians and running diplomatic interference on their behalf. This is Washington's counterattack by proxy.

Please don't tell me Saakashvili just woke up one day and decided to attack Ossetia, and that the Americans weren't notified well in advance. Georgia depends on U.S. military and economic aid, and Saakashvili is a savvy operator: he is pulling a Lebanon, having learned from the Israeli example, and the Bush administration is more than glad to oblige him. Georgian tanks would never have rolled into South Ossetia without being given a green light by Washington.
Georgia has embarked on a very dangerous course, and it's important to realize it hasn't done so alone. Saakashvili has the implicit backing of Washington in his quest to re-conquer the "lost" provinces of Ossetia and Abkhazia (and don't forget Adjaria!) – or else what are 1,000 U.S. troops doing engaged in "joint military exercises" with the Georgian military, just as the crisis reaches a crescendo of violence? (The Brits, to their credit, have thought better of getting dragged into this one…)

It's too bad Obama is going along with the game plan, but then again, he was never good on the Russian question to begin with, so I can't say I'm disappointed. South Ossetia is not now a part of "sovereign Georgian territory," and it hasn't been for nearly two decades, no matter what McCain and Obama would have us believe. If they, along with GWB, are going to stand by Saakashvili's side as he mows down civilians and imposes martial law on a war-torn, dirt-poor, and much-abused people, then may they all be damned to hell – that is, if we can find a rung low enough for them.

It's funny – if you like your humor black – but when Slobodan Milosevic was supposedly doing to Kosovo what Saakashvili is now doing to South Ossetia, the U.S. launched bombing raids and "liberated" the Kosovars from what we were told was to be a gruesome fate. There are many reasons to doubt that this attempted "genocide" ever took place, but given that something very bad was going on in the former Yugoslavia, one has to ask: why don't the same standards apply to South Ossetia?

I'll tell you why: because the victims, this time, are Russians, Slavs who haven't achieved official victim status in the lexicon of Western "humanitarians."

Imagine if, say, Colombia invaded Panama, and rained bombs down on the many U.S. citizens currently living there. Would the U.S. act to ensure their safety? You betcha! So somebody please tell me why Russia hasn't the right to defend its own citizens, and even to deter and punish Georgian aggression.

The War Party has been running on some pretty low energy lately, and this revival of the Cold War will no doubt recharge its batteries. The warmongers need a new enemy, a fresh face in their rogues' gallery, to get the masses excited again, and Putin's Russia fits the bill. I've been warning of this possibility for what seems like years, and now the moment is upon us. What's interesting is how many left-liberal "peaceniks" are falling for the War Party's guff and lining up behind McCain, their hero Obama, and the neocons in the march to confrontation with the Kremlin.~ Justin Raimondo
Copyright Antiwar.com

War breaks out - Russia and Georgia

from nytimes.com

August 9, 2008
Russia Sends Troops Into Rebel Enclave in Georgia
By ANNE BARNARD and ANDREW E. KRAMER

MOSCOW — Russia sent troops rolling into a breakaway region of Georgia on Friday after Georgian troops entered the capital of the pro-Russian enclave, in a sharp escalation of the conflict.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin declared that “war has started” and President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia accused Russia of a “well-planned invasion," saying he had mobilized Georgia’s military reserves.

Georgian forces declared they had won control of the capital of the rebel enclave, South Ossetia, though it was impossible to verify that claim. One unconfirmed report said Georgian forces had shot down two Russian planes, and Georgia said its aircraft had bombed a convoy of Russian tanks that moved into the area.

Russia’s Channel 1 television showed Russian tanks entering South Ossetia. It reported that two battalions reinforced by tanks and armored personnel carriers were approaching the capital, Tskhinvali.

Separatist leaders in Tskhinvali said casualties were at least in the hundreds but their claims were impossible to confirm independently. Eduard Kokoity, the president of South Ossetia, told the Russian news agency Interfax that hundreds of civilians had been killed.

Georgia is a strong American ally whose shift toward the West and pursuit of NATO membership has deeply angered Russia. Washington said Friday that it would send an envoy to the region to try to broker an end to the conflict.

The White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said the Bush administration had been talking to both sides to resolve the crisis.

“We urge restraint on all sides — that violence would be curtailed and that direct dialogue could ensue in order to help resolve their differences,” she said.

The European Union and NATO also called Friday for Russia and Georgia to end the hostilities.
South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia, gained de facto independence from Georgia in the late 1990s, when the region settled into a tenuous peace monitored by Russian peacekeepers. But frictions with Georgia increased sharply in 2004, when Mr. Saakashvili came to power and made national unification a centerpiece of his agenda. Since then an uneasy truce has reigned, although fighting between South Ossetia and Georgian forces has erupted sporadically.

Earlier this year, Russia announced that it was broadly expanding support for the separatist region and that it would establish legal connections with the region’s de facto government.
The latest round of fighting between the Georgian military and separatist forces began last weekend. South Ossetia accused Georgians of firing mortars into the enclave after six Georgian policemen were killed in the border area by a roadside bomb. As tensions grew, South Ossetia began sending women and children out of the enclave.

The refugee crisis appeared to intensify Friday as relief groups said thousands of refugees, mostly women and children, were now streaming across the border into the North Caucasus city of Vladikavkaz in Russia in an attempt to escape the fierce fighting.

President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia promised to “punish” those responsible for what he called “a deep violation of international law” by Georgia that he said had led to the deaths of Russian citizens and Russian peacekeepers stationed in Tskhinvali.

“I am obligated to defend the lives and dignity of Russian citizens, wherever they are located,” he said in an address carried on Russian state television. “We will not allow the unpunished killing of our fellow citizens. Those who are guilty will suffer the punishment they deserve.”
The fighting presented the most dangerous crisis in years in the Caucasus region, a key conduit for the flow of oil from the Caspian sea to world markets and an area where violent conflict has flared along the Russia’s outskirts for centuries, most recently in Chechnya.

At midday Friday, Georgian army units were trying to seize Tskhinvali using heavy machine guns and mortars in firefights with separatist paramilitary fighters, Shota Utiashvili, an official at the Interior Ministry of Georgia, said in an interview.

“Now, the army will have to take the capital,” he said, citing “massive fire” aimed at Georgian troops by fighters inside the city.

The head of a Russian peacekeeping force in the city, Marat M. Kulakhmetov, said in a telephone interview that the city had come under “massive attack” by the Georgians and that civilians had been wounded. As he spoke, shooting could be heard in the background.

Mr. Utiashvili, the Georgian official, said Georgians had seen Russian forces, including “hundreds of soldiers and dozens of armored vehicles, including tanks,” move up the military highway into the Caucasus Mountains that ties the separatist enclave to Russia.

By morning, they had passed through a mountain tunnel into the northern portion of the enclave, he said. “They are on Georgian territory now.”

“We don’t know whether they are militias or regular Russian forces,” he said. “As they carry heavy equipment, we think they must be regulars. We don’t know. We just know they are coming to attack us.”

He said Georgian Su-25 ground attack airplanes had struck the convoy and that the Georgians believed they had caused casualties and destroyed Russian armored vehicles.

But a spokesman for Teimuraz Mamsurov, the president of the semiautonomous Russian republic of North Ossetia, which borders the disputed territory, said the Georgian planes had struck an automobile convoy shipping humanitarian aid from Vladikavkaz to South Ossetia.
He said he had no information about the sighting of Russian tanks.

The Georgian military fired on Russian fighter jets that bombed Georgian territory and strafed Georgian positions at about 11 a.m. Moscow time, Mr. Utiashvili said.

Analysts said that Georgia could be trying to seize an opportune moment — with world leaders focused on the start of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing this week — to reclaim the territory.

Russia also may be seeking to draw attention away from another breakaway Georgian region, Abkhazia, where it has been under pressure to allow a settlement between pro-Russian and pro-Georgian factions, analysts said.

Meanwhile, Russian citizens in South Ossetia called on Russia to intervene, “We are being killed by Georgian aggressors,” they said in a letter posted on an official Web site maintained jointly by South Ossetia and North Ossetia, an adjacent territory on Russian territory that wants to unite with the southern region.

“We, hiding in the basement of a house, showered by bombs, are not feeling now that we are citizens of a great country. We hear Russia has a great air force and excellent planes. Protect your citizens. You are our last hope.”

The Russian Defense Ministry said Friday afternoon that it would protect Russian citizens in the territory and Russian peacekeepers who came under fire in Tskhinvali.

“The Georgian leadership has unleashed a dirty adventure,” the ministry said in a statement, posted on its Web site. “The blood shed in South Ossetia will remain on the conscience of these people and their entourage. We will not allow anyone to do harm to our peacekeepers and citizens of the Russian Federation.”

Mr. Utiashvili, the Georgian Interior Ministry official, said that about 10 Russian jets dropped seven or eight bombs on Georgian territory outside South Ossetia. The jets struck a police station in Kareli and a radar station in Gori — hitting two cities near the Georgian capital of Tblisi — and wounded several people, he said.

Nikolai Khalip and Ellen Barry contributed reporting from Moscow.