Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, said Russia was carrying out an operation to enforce peace in South Ossetia.
 
“People who are responsible for this humanitarian catastrophe [in South Ossetia] must be held responsible,” Russian news agencies quoted Medvedev as saying at a meeting with Russian Defense Minister, Anatoly Serdyukov.

Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov was also present at the meeting during which the top Russian military officials updates the President about the situation.

“Our peacekeepers and reinforcement units are currently running an operation to force the Georgian side to peace,” Medvedev said. “They [the Russia troops] are also responsible for protecting the population. That's what we are doing now.”

Russian media sources, meanwhile, reported quoting Russian peacekeeping command on the ground that units of the Russia’s 58th army, sent to South Ossetia on Friday, “forced Georgian troops out of Tskhinvali.”

“However, the Georgian side continues heavy shelling of the city,” an aide to the Russian peacekeeping troops’ commander, Vladimir Ivanov, told Interfax.

He also said that fighting was ongoing close to the Georgian village of Nikozi.

Alexandre Lomaia, the secretary of the Georgian National Security Council, however, said on August 9, that its forces maintain control over the breakaway region’s capital.