According to the BBC, the US military diverted a 'vessel carrying aid' for Georgia from the Russian-occupied port of Poti to the smaller port of Batumi, further south along the Black Sea.
One clarification bears noting - the 'vessel' the Americans sent to deliver the aid was an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, a modern and exquisitely destructive piece of navy hardware that could go toe-to-toe with pretty much anything the Russians have in the Black Sea. This includes, arguably, their Black Sea flagship Moskva, a Cold war-era heavy missile cruiser based in Sevastopol, which I took a picture of when I was in the Crimea a couple of years ago.
Sending a Burke-class DDG into a port held by Russian forces in a war zone seemed like an extreme provocation to me when I heard about it - I guess the Pentagon decided it wasn't worth the risk.
Posted by case at August 27, 2008 02:27 PM