Aircraft cuts off Saakashvili news call Published: Aug. 11, 2008 at 3:41 PM
TBILISI, Georgia, Aug. 11 (UPI) -- Georgia's president aborted a teleconference with reporters Monday, saying Russian warplanes were flying over the presidential palace in Tbilisi.
After telling reporters Georgia was in the process of being invaded, Mikheil Saakashvili said, "We have to go to the shelter because there are Russian planes flying over the presidential palace here, sorry," CNN reported.
Several minutes later, an operator said told reporters still on the call, "Russian planes are bombing near the president's location" and the conference call would be rescheduled.
"We are in the process of invasion, occupation and annihilation of an independent, democratic country," Saakashvili said during the shortened news conference Monday. "The goal of this operation is regime change in Georgia."
Once outside the palace, the president was rushed away under heavy security, CNN reported.
Russia escalated the fighting after Georgia offered a cease-fire to South Ossetia and said withdrew troops from the republic that has had ties to Russia historically. The Russian military has run operations against the Georgian capital of Tbilisi and the town of Gori.
Dang Brian, and so it begins .... There is nothing good here.
"Of course, Saddam Hussein ought to have been hanged for destroying several Shiite villages," Putin said from Moscow. "And the incumbent Georgian leaders who razed 10 Ossetian villages at once, who ran over elderly people and children with tanks, who burned civilians alive in their sheds — these leaders must be taken under protection."