Russia is adamant that the sole reason it sent hundreds of tanks and thousands of troops pouring into the secessionist territory of South Ossetia last week, and then into the undisputed territory of Georgia, was to prevent "ethnic cleansing" and a humanitarian catastrophe.

Moscow accused the Georgian armed forces of causing 2,000 deaths among civilians, and forcing up to 30,000 refugees to flee to Russia, in what Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, described yesterday as "genocide" in the Financial Times.