Russia Claims US Backed Georgia to Help McCain's Campaign

In an exclusive interview with CNN's Matthew Chance in the Black Sea city of Sochi Thursday, Putin said the U.S. had encouraged Georgia to attack the autonomous region of South Ossetia.

Putin told CNN his defense officials had told him it was done to benefit a presidential candidate -- Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are competing to succeed George W. Bush -- although he presented no evidence to back it up.

"U.S. citizens were indeed in the area in conflict," Putin said. "They were acting in implementing those orders doing as they were ordered, and the only one who can give such orders is their leader."

French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said today that the EU is considering sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Georgia.

RUSSIA today won support from China and Central Asian states in its standoff with the West over the Georgia conflict as the European Union said it was weighing sanctions against Moscow.

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev said he hoped the "united position'' of a summit of Central Asian nations would ``serve as a serious signal to those who try to turn black into white.''

The West has strongly condemned Russia's military offensive in Georgia this month and Medvedev's decision to recognise the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.

Moscow has issued an extraordinary warning to the West that military assistance to Georgia for use against South Ossetia or Abkhazia would be viewed as a "declaration of war" by Russia.

The extreme rhetoric from the Kremlin's envoy to NATO came as President Dmitry Medvedev stressed he will make a military response to US missile defence installations in eastern Europe, sending new shudders across countries whose people were once blighted by the Iron Curtain.