Soldiers Clash as Georgia, Russia Vie to Assert Power

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• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Georgia has been at odds with its much larger neighbor since gaining independence amid the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

  Set on Russia's southwestern border, Georgia has a population of 4.5 million. And since the early '90s, it has struggled to rein in two of its own smaller regions that felt a stronger allegiance to Russia – Abkhazia, on the Black Sea coast, and South Ossetia, which has a population of 70,000 and for more than a dozen years has functioned as a semi-autonomous region.

  Peacekeeping forces from both Georgia and Russia have been deployed there in an attempt to keep a lid on long-simmering tensions.

  We get a more in-depth look at today's fighting with a report narrated by Jonathan Miller of Independent Television News.

• JONATHAN MILLER:

  War in the Caucasus. Dramatic escalation today, and now the threat of conflagration, too.

  Within the past couple of hours, Russian military commanders confirming that tank units belonging to Russia's 58th Army are now directly engaging Georgian forces with artillery inside breakaway South Ossetia.

  Georgia's president accused the Russians of invading sovereign Georgian territory. Russia says it's moved to protect its citizens. The Kremlin dished out passports to South Ossetians who are mostly loyal to Moscow, not Tbilisi.

  "The citizens of Russia are dying," this Russian commander says. "The city is on fire."

  There are Russian soldiers dead and injured in the rebel capital Tskhinvali tonight. And amid claim and counterclaim about who did what first, unconfirmed and as yet unconfirmable reports that many civilians have been killed, too.

  Tonight, terrified families sheltering in bunkers the second night running.

  The Russian foreign minister blaming Georgian aggression for what he brands the ethnic cleansing of the ethnically distinct South Ossetian people. This convoy of Russian tanks is expected to reach Tskhinvali about now.

  DMITRY MEDVEDEV, President of Russia (through translator): In accordance with the constitution and federal law, and as president of the Russian Federation, I must protect the lives and dignity of Russian citizens wherever they are. We will not allow the deaths of our compatriots to go unpunished.

• JONATHAN MILLER:

  Up against Russia's military might, Mikheil Saakashvili, the pro-European president of Georgia…

  MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI, President of Georgia: Right now, I can state that Georgia is in full regime of self-defense against full-blown, unfounded, and totally illegitimate aggression from the Russian Federation. Our troops are attacked by thousands of troops coming in from Russia.

• JONATHAN MILLER:

  These are Georgian fighter aircrafts striking separatist positions. Today, the Georgian president claimed Russian planes had attacked towns inside Georgia outside the conflict zone. There are unconfirmed reports that two or more of these have been shot down.

  An independent cameraman has been filming for Channel 4 News since hostilities first broke out a week ago. He's been with Russian-armed South Ossetian rebel forces. It's been pretty violent and intense.

  Today, world leaders sought to persuade all parties to step back from the brink, and they called for talks.

• CITIZEN (through translator):

  You can see there's been fighting here and over there, too. It's really terrible. There's grief on both sides. We should sign a peace agreement at once.

• JONATHAN MILLER:

  By the look of it, there's not much hope of that tonight. Georgia has ordered a full-scale mobilization of reservists. For five years, its president has ruled a state with two rebellious regions backed by the Russians. He's always said he wants them back.

  But it's quite a fight he's picked. The separatist government of Abkhazia, the other rebel region, has mobilized its troops today and moved them to the de facto frontier to counter fears of Georgian attack.

  The Caucasus, long a restive region through which a strategic pipeline runs, is once again caught up in a conflict right on the front line of what had until today been the latest chapter in the Cold War between Russia and the West. Tonight, it's hot and getting hotter.