MOSCOW — Georgia appealed for urgent international support against Kremlin “aggression” yesterday after Russian fighter jets reportedly attacked a village close to its capital.

The incident has dramatically worsened already tense relations between the ex-Soviet neighbors. While Russia moved quickly to deny any responsibility, its ambassador was handed a formal protest note by Georgia condemning the attack as an act of “undisguised aggression and a gross violation of the country’s sovereignty.”

Georgia’s officials said that two Sukhoi attack aircraft entered Georgian airspace at 7:30 p.m. on Monday night and fired at least one missile at the village of Tsitelubani, 40 miles west of the capital, Tbilisi.

The missile left a 16-foot crater in a field but failed to detonate. Sappers later defused the missile, fragments of which bore Cyrillic letters. “We now have incontrovertible evidence that these aircraft traveled more than 80 kilometers into Georgian airspace and fired a 1,000-kilogram precision-guided, Russian-made missile,” the Georgian foreign minister, Gela Bezhuashvili, said.

The Georgian government later led Western diplomats on a tour of the site and handed over photographs and radar data to experts at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Georgia has complained of repeated violations of its airspace by Russia. In March it said Russian helicopter gunships had opened fire on the country’s remote Kodori Gorge, close to the Moscow-backed breakaway region of Abkhazia. A United Nations investigation ruled, however, that there was insufficient evidence to blame Russia conclusively.

“We believe the muted international response after the Kodori incident acted as a green light for Russian adventurism,” Mr. Bezhuashvili said. “We now appeal to the international community to stand up for its principles and condemn this aggressive behavior against us.”

President Saakashvili of Georgia, who swept to power in the Rose Revolution of 2003, has irked President Putin of Russia by seeking to join NATO and the European Union.

The Kremlin took its revenge by banning imports of Georgian wine and mineral water, pivotal to Georgia’s economy. Relations worsened further last September after Georgia expelled four Russian officers accused of espionage. Moscow retaliated by expelling thousands of Georgians living in Russia after often violent roundups by the police.

Even so, several analysts questioned what Russia would have to gain from a missile attack on a village with no strategic value. Some believed it may be the work of Kremlin hard-liners seeking to provoke a military crisis and provide an excuse for changing the constitution and allowing Mr. Putin to serve a third term after elections in March.

Others suggested the attack could have been carried out by renegade Russian military units opposed to peace talks between the Georgian government and another separatist region, South Ossetia.

South Ossetia also has Moscow backing and is close to the scene of the strike. What’s more, senior Russian officers are thought to have benefited financially from the region’s lawlessness.

But the Georgian interior minister, Vano Merabishvili, said he believed the Russian jets were attempting to strike a nearby military tracking radar and missed.

“This is a very dangerous development,” he said. “Moscow is sending out a very clear signal to any Eastern European country that opposes it. They are saying, ‘We can do this to you.'”