The New York Times is reporting:
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.
For any of you who had doubts as to what the real intentions of Putin's Russia is in this affair, this should dispell it.
"They seem to have gone beyond the logical stopping point"
to retake the separatist regions, said a senior Western Analyst.
I continue to be utterly AMAZED at the lack of coverage of this by the American Media. It's like an Orwellian Memory Hole.
Remember what this is all boiling down to, despite all the talk of "Aiding" the Siloviki that run S. Ossettia from Georgian Agression. Russia is making it's move to maintain control over the Caspian Republics.
And this isn't any simple thrust, either.
Armoured and Mechanized Infantry units don't just move on a dime, they take careful planning, coordination, and pre-positioning just to move down the road. And too many things are coming together at once to think this hasn't been in planning, FOR MONTHS.
like this from the NYT Article:
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 City of Gori is Strategicly VERY important, several miles INSIDE GEorgia, and sits astride the main East-West connections in Georgia, including the Azer-Turkey Rail links, and the PIPELINES that the Russians do not yet have control over, that feed Eastern Europe with Oil and Gas.
UPDATE FROM THE BBC:
the BBC's Richard Galpin described a sense of panic on Sunday night in the Georgian town of Gori, near South Ossetia, amid fears that Russian troops were about to march on the town.
He had been warned by the interior ministry to leave Gori, only to find that the road to Tbilisi was crammed with cars full of fleeing civilians.
UPDATE:
It also appears that Russia is blocking Georgia's Internet Portals...
This is on the President of Poland's Website, RIGHT NOW:
Along with military aggression, the Russian Federation is blocking Georgian internet portals. On request of the President of Georgia, President of the Republic of Poland has provided the website of the President of Poland for dissemination of information.