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Georgia has released intercepted telephone calls purporting to show that part of a Russian armored regiment crossed into the separatist enclave of South Ossetia nearly a full day before Georgia’s attack on the capital, Tskhinvali, late on Aug. 7. ... The back and forth over who started the war is already an issue in the American presidential race, with Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican vice presidential candidate, contending that Russia’s incursion into Georgia was “unprovoked,” while others argue that Georgia’s shelling of Tskhinvali was provocation. Georgia claims that its main evidence — two of several calls secretly recorded...

As Russian troops pounded through Georgia last week, the Kremlin and its allies repeatedly pointed to one justification above all others: The Georgian military had destroyed the city of Tskhinvali. Russian politicians and their partners in Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region South Ossetia, said that when Georgian forces tried to seize control of the city and the surrounding area, the physical damage was comparable to Stalingrad and the killings similar to the Holocaust. But a trip to the city on Sunday, without official escorts, revealed a very different picture. While it was clear there had been heavy fighting...

The Russian invasion of Georgia was not a spontaneous response to what Moscow called “genocide” in South Ossetia but had been planned in detail since April, (snip) It is generally agreed that the spark for the war was the Nato summit in Bucharest in April at which Georgia was promised membership of the western alliance, (snip) By the start of August, Russian military engineers repaired the railway linking Russia to Abkhazia, allowing the sudden appearance of heavy military equipment that was later used to attack and loot the Georgian army base at Senaki, (snip) The Russian-backed separatists stepped up attacks...

U.S. citizen Joe Mestas, who married resident of South Ossetia and has 5 - old daughter witnessed the attack on Tskhinvali. "I am ready to declare the whole world that this war unleashed a Georgia, Ossetia live in that peaceful people who do not need war," - Joe Mestas told ITAR-TASS.http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vesti.ru%2Fdoc.html%3Fid%3D199974%26tid%3D60353&hl=ru&ie=UTF8&sl=ru&tl=en

TBILISI, Georgia -- Russia's foreign minister is disputing Georgia's claim that its troops have pulled out of South Ossetia, the separatist region where fighting with Russian forces has killed hundreds this weekend. Earlier Sunday, Georgia said its troops were withdrawing and President Mikhail Saakashvili said he was calling a cease-fire. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov disputed that in a telephone call with his Georgian counterpart Eka Tkeshelashvili, a ministry statement said. In the call, "the Russian side brought in facts about the presence of Georgian forces in certain neighborhoods of Tskhinvali," the South Ossetian capital where fighting has been...

Tskhinvali, the capital of the separatist Georgian province South Ossetia, lay in smoldering ruins Sunday after three days of fighting between Georgian troops and Russian forces. Russia's deputy foreign minister said at least 2,000 people, mostly South Ossetians who claim Russian citizenship, have been killed in Tskhinvali. The fighting had spread well beyond South Ossetia, with Russian airstrikes on Georgian cities and with thousands of Russian troops in the breakaway province of Abkhazia. The United States warned Sunday that "disproportionate" actions against Georgia could have a "significant long term impact on U.S.-Russian relations."

Georgia claims to have shot down ten aircraft and captured a Russian pilot. Kakha Lomaia, the secretary of Georgia's security council, said: "We have hit a Russian fighter this morning and the pilot has been captured." The two countries are close to full scale war after Russian tanks invaded the tiny territory in response to Georgian attacks on Moscow-backed separatists. South Ossetia's rebel leader said more than 1,400 civilians had been killed in the first day of fighting around the capital Tskhinvali. Foreign journalists witnessed an air attack on the town of Gori early on Saturday morning and the Georgian...

Russian jets have bombed a Georgian town amid a deepening crisis over the breakaway South Ossetia region. Georgia says 60 people died in Gori when the bombs hit residential buildings as well as military targets. Russian officials say hundreds of civilians have been killed in South Ossetia. Georgia denies the figure, which cannot be independently verified. The Georgian parliament has meanwhile approved a presidential decree declaring a state of war for 15 days. Reports differ over who controls South Ossetia's capital, with Moscow saying it has "liberated" Tskhinvali. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said his country was seeking "to force the...

TBILISI, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Russian fighter jets targeted the the major Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline which carries oil to the West from Asia but missed, Georgia's Economic Development Minister Ekaterina Sharashidze said on Saturday. "This clearly shows that Russia has not just targeted Georgian economic outlets but international economic outlets in Georgia," she said at a news briefing. There have been no independent verifications of Russian jets targeting the BTC pipeline. (Reporting by Margarita Antidze, writing by James Kilner, editing by Jon Boyle)

Excerpt - GORI, Georgia, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Russia said it had driven Georgian forces from the capital of South Ossetia on Saturday as part of an operation to force Georgia to accept peace in its breakaway region. "Tactical groups have fully liberated Tskhinvali from the Georgian military and have started pushing Georgian units beyond the zone of peacekeepers responsibility," Tass quoted Ground Forces commander Vladimir Boldyrev as saying. ~ snip ~

Russia sent troops and dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles into the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia today, vowing to protect its citizens in a move described by Tbilisi's pro-Western Government as an act of war. A South Ossetian rebel minister said that more than 1,000 people had been killed in overnight shelling of the city of Tskhinvali, the separatist capital which Georgia claimed today to have captured. In probably the most serious regional crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, at least 50 Russian tanks – and possibly many more – rumbled through the Roki...