Blame for the South Ossetian crisis rests squarely with Russia, said Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's president, accusing 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 during a late night interview in his office. He added: "From our point of view [the Georgian military] was responding to a Russian invasion."