Blame for the South Ossetian crisis rested squarely with Russia, said Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s president, who accused the Russians of having deployed tanks into the disputed region before Georgian forces attacked earlier this month.

“The first thing that happened was that the Russian tanks came in,” Mr Saakashvili told the Financial Times in an interview. He added: “From our point of view [the Georgian military] was responding to a Russian invasion.”