Telegraph.co.uk
Georgia president claims Russians are now within artillery range of Tbilisi
The Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, has urged the West to take
immediate action against Moscow after accusing Russian forces of moving
their artillery to within range of the capital city Tbilisi.
By Adrian Blomfield near Akhalgori
26 Aug 2008
Just hours before Russia escalated the crisis by recognising the
independence of two separatist Georgian provinces, Mr Saakashvili said
Russian forces had advanced to the strategic Akhalgori heights 10 miles from
Tbilisi.
He warned that Georgia would respond with force if its capital was attacked
and told the West to act more forcefully against Russian aggression.
"They are trying to take the heights of Akhalgori," he told reporters at a
briefing this morning. "This is the most worrying thing at the moment. They
would be within 20km of Tbilisi.
"We are in a very precarious situation."
The president said that the West now had to act meaningfully to stop
Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, from heightening the crisis
still further.
"Some people in the West have been in denial for a long time," he said. "Now
there can be no more denial.
"The West has to show that this will cost them – really cost them. You are
dealing with bullies here and bullies do not understand the tender message."
As the crisis has unfolded, Western governments have limited themselves to
strongly-worded statements condemning Moscow’s aggression and vague threats
of limited retribution if Russia does not end its occupation of Georgian
territory.
Mr Putin has openly mocked the West’s response.
"This is the guy who thinks that statements don’t mean anything and that the
West will always blink first," the Georgian president said of Mr Putin.
The West is nonetheless likely to be extremely concerned if Russia has used
the cover of a truce brokered by the European Union to advance unchallenged
to within shelling distance of Tbilisi.
It was not possible to verify whether a Russian military buildup around
Akhalgori was underway.
The town, which technically lies within the boundaries of the breakaway
region of South Ossetia, but has been under Georgian government control
since 1992, fell to the advancing Russians earlier this month.
Bearded South Ossetian militiamen, sporting rocket launchers and fake
designer sunglasses, manned a makeshift checkpoint outside Akhalgori this
morning and refused to allow The Daily Telegraph into the town.
A fighter, who claimed to be a battalion commander and identified himself as
Anatoly, denied there had been any Russian military build up in the town.
"It is the opposite," he said. "There was a large Russian military presence
here before but now there are just Russian peacekeepers."
Asked why western reporters were being denied access to Akhalgori, Anatoly
was vague.
"Actually there is no problem with you entering but we are going to do some
events here and we don’t want any journalists," he said.
As he spoke a Russian helicopter gunship swooped low over the road above
him, heading in the direction of the nearby town.
European military monitors who attempted to gain access to Akhalgori were
also turned back by the militiamen.
A few hundred yards down the road, at a Georgian police checkpoint, officers
said that Georgian residents of the ethnically mixed town had begun to flee
the previous evening after noticing a significant troop build up.
"They saw columns of headlights moving along the track from South Ossetia
towards Akhalgori," one officer said.
The development came as two US warships headed towards the Georgian Black
Sea port of Poti, which remains ringed by Russian troops in contravention of
the terms of the truce brokered by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president.
While ostensibly on a humanitarian mission to deliver aid supplies, the
presence of an American destroyer armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles has
enraged the Kremlin.
The Russian cruise ship the Moskva, which had been deployed off the Georgian
coastline during the five-day war, was seen leaving the Crimean naval base
of Sevastopol, headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
Early reports indicated that the Moskva was sailing south, possibly towards
Poti – " raising the possibility of a naval face-off between the United
States and Russia for the first time since the Cold War.
Mr Saakashvili said that the only way to halt Russian aggression was by
imposing visa bans on Kremlin officials to prevent them, and their families,
from entering Europe.
"All their money is in the West," he said. "They get very upset when they
can’t go to Courchevel."
The Georgian president also claimed that Mr Putin had threatened him with a
war over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in a telephone
conversation nearly two years ago.
According to Mr Saakashvili, the Russian leader threatened to turn Georgia
"into Northern Cyprus." When Mr Saakashvili reminded his counterpart that
Georgia had a close relationship with Nato, Mr Putin’s reaction was
allegedly one of amusement.
"He said to me: ‘Do you really think that Nato is going to come and fight us
in the Caucasus?’" Mr Saakashvili said.
The Georgian president appealed to Western countries to think carefully
about participating in the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, which will be held in
Sochi, a Russian resort close to Abkhazia.
"If it takes place in these circumstances it would be a terrible thing," Mr
Saakashvili said, claiming that Abkhaz fighters had carried out "ethnic
cleansing" against Georgians just a few miles from Sochi.
"It reminds me of the 1936 Olympics. A month ago that would have seemed a
wild thing to say. Now it doesn’t."