Image The Georgian city of Gori after Russian air attacks on Saturday. Credit... Gleb Garanich/Reuters

Mr. Putin said that dozens of people had been killed in South Ossetia and hundreds wounded, and tens of thousands were reported to be fleeing. Georgia’s health minister said that more than 80 people had been killed, including 40 civilians who died in airstrikes in Gori, a city north of Tbilisi. Another Georgian official said at least 800 people, almost all of them civilians, had been injured. Each side’s figures were impossible to confirm independently, as was an earlier claim released by South Ossetians and repeated by some Russian officials that 1,500 people had been killed in the territory.

The fighting, and the Kremlin’s confidence in the face of Western outcry, had wide international implications, as both Russian and Georgian officials placed it squarely in the context of renewed cold war-style tensions and an East-West struggle for regional influence..

Western influence over Russia appeared minimal. The East and West were stuck in diplomatic impasse, even as reports of heavy civilian casualties indicated that the humanitarian toll was climbing. The United Nations Security Council was meeting Saturday to discuss the crisis, but with no resolution.

Georgian officials said their only way out of the conflict was for the United States to step in, but with American military intervention unlikely, they were hoping for the West to exert diplomatic pressure to stop the Russian attacks.

Image Georgian soldiers near a bombed building in Gori on Saturday. Credit... Gleb Garanich/Reuters

“Georgia is a sovereign nation, and its territorial integrity must be respected,” President Bush said at the Olympics in Beijing. “We have urged an immediate halt to the violence and a stand-down by all troops. We call for the end of the Russian bombings.”