TBILISI, Georgia - Russia expanded its attacks on Georgia yesterday, moving tanks and troops through the separatist enclave of South Ossetia and advancing toward the city of Gori in central Georgia, in its first direct assault on a Georgian city with ground forces after three days of heavy fighting, Georgian officials said.
The maneuver - along with aerial bombing of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi - suggested that Russia's aims in the conflict had gone beyond securing the pro-Russian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to weakening the armed forces of Georgia, a former Soviet republic and an ally of the United States whose Western leanings have long annoyed the Kremlin.
Russia's moves, which came after Georgia offered a cease-fire and pulled its troops out of South Ossetia, sparked widespread international alarm and anger and set the stage for an intense diplomatic confrontation with the United States.
Two senior Western officials said that it was unclear whether Russia intended a full invasion of Georgia but that its aims could go as far as destroying Georgia's armed forces or overthrowing its pro-Western president, Mikhail Saakashvili.
"They seem to have gone beyond the logical stopping point," one senior Western diplomat said.
The escalation of fighting between Russia and the former Soviet republic raised tensions between Russia and its former Cold War foes to their highest level in decades. President Bush has promoted Georgia as a bastion of democracy, helped strengthen its military and urged that NATO admit the country to membership. Georgia serves as a major conduit for oil flowing from Russia and Central Asia to the West.
But Russia, emboldened by windfall profits from oil exports, is demonstrating a resolve to reassert its dominance in a region it has always considered its "near abroad."
The military action, which has involved air, naval and missile attacks, marks the largest engagement by Russian forces outside its borders since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russia also escalated its assault yesterday despite strong diplomatic warnings from Bush and European leaders, underscoring the limits of Western influence over Russia at a time when the rest of Europe depends heavily on Russia for natural gas and the United States needs Moscow's cooperation if it has any hope of curtailing what it sees as a nuclear weapons threat from Iran.
