Russia will have to close its embassy in Georgia if ties are severed, the RIA-Novosti agency quoted an unnamed ministry official as saying. However, both nations' consulates will remain open - important for the many Georgian citizens living in Russia.
Adding to the tension, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Russia will not be isolated over its conduct in Georgia and warned Europe that it shouldn't cater to the United States.
"If European countries want to serve the foreign policy interests of the United States, in my view they won't win anything from this," Putin said in an interview with Germany's ARD television before a European Union meeting in Brussels on Monday about the Georgia crisis and relations with Russia.
French officials said yesterday that European Union leaders will not impose sanctions on Russia at the Brussels meeting even though some EU countries have pushed for them.
France's foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, has said the EU is considering sanctions against Russia after its recognition of independence for two breakaway Georgian provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. France currently holds the EU presidency.
Kouchner told reporters that a provisional text for the Brussels meeting has been drawn up, and that his focus was on unity in the 27-member EU bloc.
In his interview yesterday, Putin also justified Russia's actions, saying it had defended the lives of its citizens during the war. "Such a country will not be in isolation," he said in an excerpts shown on state-run Russian television.
A lawmaker in South Ossetia, meanwhile, said Russia intends to eventually absorb the breakaway province at the center of the war that broke out Aug. 7 when Georgia sent troops into South Ossetia to wrest back control from separatists, prompting Russia to send in hundreds of tanks and troops.
The five days of warfare ruined already frayed Georgia-Russia ties and caused the biggest crisis in Moscow's relations with the West since the 1991 Soviet collapse.
