TBILISI, Georgia — Declaring “the aggressor has been punished,” the Kremlin ordered a halt today to Russia’s devastating assault on Georgia — five days of air and ground attacks that left homes in smoldering ruins and uprooted 100,000 people.

Georgia said the bombs and shells were still coming hours after the cease-fire was declared, and its President Saakashvili said Russia’s aim all along was not to gain control of two disputed provinces but to “destroy” the smaller nation, a former Soviet state and current U.S. ally.

President Medvedev of Russia, speaking in Moscow, said Georgia had paid enough for its attack on South Ossetia, a separatist region along the Russian border with close ties to Russia.

“The aggressor has been punished and suffered very significant losses. Its military has been disorganized,” Mr. Medvedev said.

Still, the president ordered his defense minister at a televised Kremlin meeting: “If there are any emerging hotbeds of resistance or any aggressive actions, you should take steps to destroy them.”

Hours later, Mr. Saakashvili told reporters that he accepted the cease-fire plan negotiated by President Sarkozy of France.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were believed to have died since Georgia launched its crackdown on South Ossetia on Thursday, drawing the punishing response from its much larger northern neighbor. A Russian estimate put the figure at 2,000 killed.

There was evidence Russian forces were attacking Georgian targets within hours of Medvedev’s televised order, if not after.

An Associated Press reporter saw 135 Russian military vehicles headed toward the Kodori Gorge, the last Russian stronghold in Abkhazia.

Georgian officials said Russia was attacking their troops in the gorge, but a commander in Abkhazia said only local forces, not Russian ones, were involved in push the Georgians out of the region.

The commander, Major General Anatoly Zaitsev, said the Russian-backed separatist forces in Abkhazia had driven Georgian troops out of their last stronghold in the region after days of air and artillery strikes.

And hours before Mr. Medvedev’s order, Russian jets bombed the crossroads city of Gori, near South Ossetia. The post office and university there were burning, but the city was all but deserted after most remaining residents and Georgian soldiers fled.

Mr. Saakashvili spoke before thousands at a square in the capital of Tbilisi, red and white Georgian flags fluttering in the crowd, said the Russian invasion was not about the two disputed provinces.

“They just don’t want freedom, and that’s why they want to stamp on Georgia and destroy it,” he declared.

Russia accused Georgia of killing more than 2,000 people, mostly civilians, in the separatist province of South Ossetia. The claim couldn’t be independently confirmed, but witnesses who fled the area over the weekend said hundreds had died.

The overall death toll was expected to rise because large areas of Georgia were still too dangerous for journalists to enter and see the true scope of the damage.

The first relief flight from the U.N. refugee agency arrived in Georgia as the number of people uprooted by the conflict neared 100,000. Thousands streamed into the capital.

Those left behind in devastated regions of Georgia cowered in rat-infested cellars or wandered nearly deserted cities.

In Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian provincial capital now under Russian control, the body of a Georgian soldier lay in the street along with debris as separatist fighters launched rockets at a Georgian plane soaring overhead.

A tour by AP journalists found the heaviest damage around the government center. Near the city center, pieces of tanks lay near a bomb crater. The turret of one tank was blown into the front of the printing school across the street. A severed foot lay on the sidewalk nearby. Several residential areas seemed to have little damage beyond shattered windows.

A poster hanging nearby showed the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, and the words “Say yes to peace and stability.” Broken glass and other debris littered the ground.

Besides the dead, tens of thousands of terrified people have fled the fighting — South Ossetians north to Russia, and Georgians east toward the capital of Tbilisi and west to the country’s Black Sea coast.

Among those left behind was 70-year-old Vahktang Chkekvadze, a Georgian villager living in Ruisi who was picking away what was left of a window frame torn by an explosion.

“I always hide in the basement,” he said, used to living in a conflict zone. “But this time the explosion came so abruptly, I don’t remember what happened afterward.”

Two men and a woman in the village, in undisputed Georgian territory just outside South Ossetia, were killed just half an hour before Medvedev went on television to announce the pause in fighting.

Amid the suggestions the military action was cooling down, the Russia-Georgia dispute reached the international courts, with the Georgian security council saying it had sued for ethnic cleansing. Earlier the Russians accused the Georgians of genocide.

And the conflict — and its Cold War echoes — continued to play out on the international stage. The leaders of five former Soviet bloc states spoke out against Russian domination at a rally in Tbilisi.

“Our neighbor thinks it can fight us. We are telling it no,” President Lech Kaczynski of Poland, who was joined by the leaders of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Ukraine at the rally, said. Kaczynski says Russia wanted a return to “old times.

The Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, told CNN his country is seeking details on what started the fighting.

“We do not want to believe that the United States has given a green light to this adventurous act,” he said. “But our American colleagues are telling us that they’re investigating now what may have happened in the channels of communication for Mr. Saakashvili to have behaved in such a reckless manner.”

President Bush, one day earlier, had called the Russian invasion unacceptable, and today the Russian president assailed the West for supporting Georgia. “International law doesn’t envision double standards,” Mr. Medvedev said.

American officials were focused on confirming a cease-fire and attending to Georgia’s urgent humanitarian needs.

“The Russians need to stop their military operations as they have apparently said that they will, but those military operations really do now need to stop because calm needs to be restored,” Secretary of State Rice said.

Georgia, which is pushing for NATO membership, borders the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia and was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.

South Ossetia and Abkhazia have run their own affairs without international recognition since fighting to split from Georgia in the early 1990s. Both separatist provinces are backed by Russia, which appears open to absorbing them.

Mr. Medvedev said Georgia must allow the provinces to decide whether they want to remain part of Russia.

“Ossetians and Abkhaz must respond to that question taking their history into account, including what happened in the past few days,” Mr. Medvedev said grimly.

Mr. Medvedev said Russian peacekeepers would stay in both provinces, even as Mr. Saakashvili said his government will officially designate them as occupying forces.

In Tbilisi, the American Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Matthew Bryza, declined to say whether America would provide military support if Russia expands its assault.

Georgia sits on a strategic oil pipeline carrying Caspian crude to Western markets and bypassing Russia. The British oil company BP shut down one of three Georgian pipelines, saying it was a precaution.