Russia Presses Into 2nd Front in Georgia
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ, ANNE BARNARD and ANDREW E. KRAMER
SENAKI, Georgia — Russian armored vehicles rolled 25 miles into western Georgia and took up positions at a military base here early Monday after issuing an ultimatum to Georgia to disarm its troops, along the boundary with the separatist territory of Abkhazia.
The Russian military advances represented the first time Russian forces invaded Georgia proper in the four-day-old conflict, which has unnerved the West and resurrected some Cold War anxieties.
Georgian officials said Russian troops had moved into several other cities in western Georgia, holding out the prospect that fighting could escalate on a second front. The Russian Defense Ministry said it was taking up the positions in order to prevent Georgian military units from regrouping and threatening their peacekeepers in Abkhazia. Russia has poured extra forces into the territory, where it now has at least 9,000 troops and 350 armored vehicles.
The conflict initially broke out last week around South Ossetia, the separatist enclave carved out of north-central Georgia. The level of fighting involved, however, remains uncertain amid the welter of inflated and contradictory reports from both Georgian and Russian sources. There are no independent observers with either country’s forces, and verifying claims about military activity was not immediately possible.
There were numerous but unconfirmed reports that Russian forces had occupied a major town just south of South Ossetia, Gori, which sits astride the country’s main east-west road and is home to a major military installation. Russia denied its troops were there.
In Senaki, south of the Abhaz border, two Russian tanks were parked inside the gate of a refurbished military base that until two days ago had been a Georgian military outpost. Russian soldiers who identified themselves as peacekeepers said that they now controlled the downtown base, located well outside the United Nations-designated zone in which Russian peacekeepers are allowed to operate tanks and heavy guns. An armored personnel carrier patrolled the village.
Residents said the Georgian military had fled without shooting. But bombs pounded the area, and residents said soldiers had told them they would not hurt civilians but would “annihilate” anyone in a uniform.
Along the road from Gori to Tblisi, about a 45-minute drive, residents were leaving Gori alongside Georgian military units heading towards the capital. Troops in desert gear rode in yellow municipal buses alongside columns of a dozen armored personnel carriers.
“We were the last to leave,” said an ambulance driver, who drove out hospital personnel as the Russians moved in. Speaking in Tblisi, he said it took them half an hour to take the city because the Georgian Army had pulled back. He showed video footage on his mobile phone of fire in the city. “We left behind all the equipment in the hospital and 80 bodies in the morgue,” said the driver, who declined to give his name.
President Mikheil Saakashvili addressed the nation, saying Russian troops had reached the main east-west road.
“The situation in Georgia is very difficult because Russia is doing everything possible to occupy the country,” Mr. Saakashvili told the Georgian Security Council.
He urged citizens not to panic and said Tblisi was not in immediate danger. “If Tbilisi comes under threat, I will inform the residents 12 hours in advance,” he said.
Twice during the day, Mr. Saakashvili fled a location for safety. One incident was in Tblisi, in which a plane flew overhead while he was on a conference call with reporters; the other was in Gori, when his security team suddenly rushed him away from a building as he was touring a bombing site.
Residents were also fleeing the port city of Poti, said Karina Tsotsoria, a Georgian woman living in Moscow, who said she had just spoken on the phone to her husband, Badri, who had fled their home when he saw television footage of approaching Russian tanks.
“He’s afraid,” she said. “We don’t know what their goals are. How can you be sure, when tanks appraoch your city, that they won’t shoot?”
The Russian ultimatum, issued by Maj. Gen. Sergei Chaban, commander of Russian peacekeeping forces in Abkhazia, called for Georgian troops to disarm in the Zugdidi District, along the border between Abkhazia and Georgia.
Russian officials say Georgia provoked the assault on its troops by attacking South Ossetia, causing heavy civilian casualties. The Kremlin said its actions since then were intended to strike at Georgian military forces that had fired on its peacekeeping troops in South Ossetia and it did not intend a broader offensive deeper into Georgia.
However, Georgian officials said that over the weekend Russia had expanded its attacks on Georgia, moving tanks and troops through South Ossetia and advancing toward Gori. That maneuver, the Russian bombing of Tbilisi, and then the occupation of a Georgian military base in Senaki seemed to suggest that Russia’s aims in the conflict after four days of fighting had gone beyond securing South Ossetia and Abkhazia to weakening the armed forces of Georgia, a former Soviet republic and an ally of the United States whose Western leanings have long irritated the Kremlin.
On Monday, in the conference call with reporters, Mr. Saakashvili said Georgian and Russian troops had fought fierce battles overnight as Russian tanks advanced toward Gori before being driven back, with heavy casualties on both sides. Russian planes also bombed targets across Georgia on Monday, including roads and bridges, he said, before fleeing to a bomb shelter because Russian planes were flying over the presidential palace in Tbilisi.
Explosions were seen in the fields around Gori around 12:35 p.m. Monday. There was no evidence of bombing in civilian areas of the town. But from high ground, plumes of white smoke and clouds on the outskirts were visible. It was unclear whether the explosions were caused by airstrikes or by shelling.
The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, has been trying to arrange a cease-fire and Mr. Saakashvili said Georgia had signed one.
However, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it would agree to a cease-fire only if Georgia pulled its troops out of South Ossetia and signed an agreement banning the use of force against the territory. Mr. Saakashvili has made reuniting the territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia with Georgia a centerpiece of his presidency.
On Monday, an Abkhaz official said that Abkhaz forces, backed by Russian paratroopers, would kill Georgian troops if they did not leave Kodori Gorge, the only part of the territory where Georgia has military forces. Abkhaz troops blocked the gorge and proposed the formation of a humanitarian corridor to allow Georgian troops and civilians to leave safely, the Abkhaz defense minister, Mirab Kishmariya, told the Russian news agency Interfax.
“If the Georgian troops don’t take advantage of this opportunity, then an operation to eliminate them will begin,” the minister said.
Russia’s escalation of the fighting, after Georgia offered a cease-fire and said it had pulled its troops out of South Ossetia, set the stage for an intense diplomatic confrontation with the United States.
The fighting raised tensions between Russia and its former cold-war foes to their highest level in decades. President Bush has promoted Georgia as a bastion of democracy, helped strengthen its military and urged that NATO grant the country to membership. Georgia serves as a major conduit for oil flowing from Russia and Central Asia to the West.
But Russia, emboldened by windfall profits from oil exports, is showing a resolve to reassert its dominance in a region it has always considered its “near abroad.”
The military action, which has involved air, naval and missile attacks, is the largest engagement by Russian forces outside its borders since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Strong diplomatic warnings from Mr. Bush and European leaders have been ignored, underscoring the limits of Western influence over Russia at a time when the rest of Europe depends heavily on Russian natural gas and the United States needs Moscow’s cooperation if it hopes to curtail what it believes is a nuclear weapons threat from Iran.
Vice President Dick Cheney, in a telephone conversation with the Georgian president on Monday, said “that Russian aggression must not go unanswered, and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well as the broader international community,” according to Mr. Cheney’s spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride.
European officials also levied pressure for an immediate cease-fire and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, could travel to the region as early as Tuesday.
“To try to finalize all the steps, we are taking around a document that has to be accepted by both sides,” he said.
Both Abkhazia and South Ossetia won de facto autonomy from Georgia in fighting in the early 1990s. The current fighting broke out last week in South Ossetia when Georgian troops tried to take the capital in what seems to have been a major miscalculation. Russia says it is acting to protect residents there and to punish Georgia for the assault.
Reports of the death toll varied widely, from the low hundreds to more than 2,000, but none could be independently verified. Russian officials say more than 30,000 South Ossetians have fled into Russia.
Andrew E. Kramer reported from Gori, Georgia; Anne Barnard from Moscow; and Michael Schwirtz from Senaki, Georgia. Reporting was contributed by Nicholas Kulish from Tbilisi, Georgia; Helene Cooper from Washington; Joseph Sywenkiy from Gori, Georgia; and Katrin Bennhold and Tom Rachman from Paris.
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