Russian troops advance on Gori, Georgia

NY Times:

Russian tanks and troops moved through the separatist enclave of South Ossetia and advanced on the city of Gori in central Georgia on Sunday night, for the first time directly assaulting a Georgian city with ground forces after three days of heavy fighting, Georgian officials said.

Georgian tanks were dug into positions outside Gori and planning to defend the city, said Shota Utiashvili, an official in Georgia’s interior ministry. He said the city of Gori was coming under artillery and tank fire. There was no immediate comment from Russia.

A senior Western diplomat said it was unclear whether Russia intended a full invasion of Georgia. “They seem to have gone beyond the logical stopping point” to retake the separatist regions, he said.

The Bush administration said Sunday that it would seek a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Russian military actions in Georgia. And in a heated exchange with his Russian counterpart at the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, accused the Kremlin of seeking to oust Georgia’s pro-Western president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

A column of Russian forces was also seeking Sunday night to enter Georgian territory from Abkhazia, another separatist enclave to the west, and Abkhaz fighters were massed at the boundary line, an Abkhaz official said in an interview.

The advance appeared to answer the question on which the conflict had been pivoting: Would Russia simply occupy the two separatist territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, or would it push into Georgia, raising the possibility of a full-scale invasion?

Gori, about a 45-minute drive south from the capital of South Ossetia, Tskinvali, sits in a valley that is the main route connecting the east and west halves of Georgia.

Mr. Utiashvili said the Russians were “trying to cut the country in half.” He said that if they tried to occupy Georgia, “there will probably be guerilla warfare all over the country.”

In Washington, American officials reacted with deepening alarm to Russia’s military activities on Sunday. Georgian troops had tried to disengage, but the Russians had not allowed them.

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One of the mistakes some in the media have made is describing the Russian military actions as raids. These are major combat operations that should properly be described as combat persisting. These are take and hold operations and not raids. Until there is a better explanation coming from Russia one has to assume the most sinister objectives on the part of the Russians.

I suspect that the Russians have been playing us for time in hopes of avoiding a UN confrontation on the aggression until they have achieved their objectives. There will probably be a confrontation in the UN on Monday that will be even more heated than the one today.

The Telegraph says a full scale evacuation of Gori underway.