US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has told Russia that its military involvement in Georgia is damaging its international reputation.
Moscow maintains that Georgia started the conflict last month by invading the breakaway region of South Ossetia and that its troops only entered Georgian territory to protect its citizens.
However, in an address in Washington last night, Dr Rice said the US and Europe would not allow Russia to bully other countries.
Ms Rice said Russia's leaders went too far when they ordered the 7 August invasion of neighbouring Georgia and they now face what she said is a united US-European diplomatic defence of Tbilisi.
The attack ‘has crystallized the course that Russia's leaders are taking, and brought us to a critical moment for Russia and the world,’ Ms Rice told the German Marshall Fund, a transatlantic policy research group.
Russia now risks undermining the steps it has taken toward being integrated into world economic and political institutions since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, she added.
