TBILISI, Georgia — Georgia said today it was severing diplomatic ties with Moscow to protest the presence of Russian troops on its territory. Russia criticized the move, saying it will not benefit relations between the countries.

Georgia will withdraw the remaining diplomats from its Moscow Embassy tomorrow, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Nato Chikovani, said. Georgia’s parliament voted unanimously late yesterday to break off diplomatic ties with the “aggressor country.”

Russia criticized the decision. “Breaking off diplomatic relations with Tbilisi is not Moscow’s choice, and the responsibility lies with Tbilisi,” the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Andrei Nesterenko, as saying.

RIA-Novosti quoted an unnamed Foreign Ministry official as saying that Russia would have to close its embassy in Georgia if diplomatic relations were severed.

Both nations’ consulates will remain open — important for the many Georgian citizens living in Russia.

Adding to tension, a lawmaker in South Ossetia said that Russia intends to eventually absorb the breakaway Georgian province at the center of the five-day war that has ruined Georgian-Russia ties and caused the biggest crisis in Moscow’s relations with the West since the 1991 Soviet collapse.

Russia on Tuesday recognized South Ossetia and another separatist region, Abkhazia, as independent.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the region’s leader, Eduard Kokoity, discussed the future of South Ossetia earlier this week in Moscow, the South Ossetian parliamentary speaker, Znaur Gassiyev, said.

Russia will absorb South Ossetia “in several years” or earlier, a position was “firmly stated by both leaders,” Mr. Gassiyev said in Tskhinvali, the provincial capital.

In Moscow, a Kremlin spokeswoman said today there was “no official information” on the talks.

A Georgian lawmaker said his country will eventually regain control of South Ossetia and another rebel region, Abkhazia.

“The separatist regimes of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and the Russian authorities are cut off from reality,” Gigi Tsereteli said in Tbilisi. “The world has already become different and Russia will not long be able to occupy sovereign Georgian territory.

“The regimes of Abkhazia and South Ossetia should think about the fact that if they become part of Russia, they will be assimilated and in this way they will disappear,” he added.

Moscow’s recognition Tuesday of South Ossetia and another separatist province, Abkhazia, came on the back of a short war that began August 7, when Georgia launched a military offensive to retake South Ossetia. Russia responded by rolling hundreds of tanks into the Moscow-friendly province and pushed the Georgian army out.

Russia blasted the offensive as blind aggression, saying the move deprived Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili of the moral authority to defend Georgia’s territorial integrity.

Georgia and the West in turn criticized Russia for pressing further into Georgia proper and for ignoring a cease-fire brokered by the European Union.

But a high-ranking official in French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s office says that for now “we don’t foresee any sanctions decided on by the European Council.”

European Union leaders are holding a summit Monday and some member countries have pushed to punish Russia over the crisis with Georgia. But Mr. Sarkozy’s office believes Europe must concentrate on pressuring Russia to apply a cease-fire agreement.

France currently holds the rotating EU presidency.

The official spoke today on condition of anonymity because of office policy. He elaborated on remarks by France’s foreign minister, who has said sanctions were being considered.

Meanwhile, Russia and South Ossetia plan to sign an agreement on the placement of Russian military bases in South Ossetia, the province’s deputy parliamentary speaker, Tarzan Kokoiti, said. How many bases that involves will become clear on September 2, when the document is set to be signed, he said.

He said South Ossetians have the right to reunite with North Ossetia, which is part of Russia.

“Soon there will be no North or South Ossetia — there will be a united Alania as part of Russia,” Mr. Kokoiti said, using another name for Ossetia.

“We will live in one united Russian state,” he said.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused America yesterday of instigating the fighting in Georgia and said he suspects a connection to the American presidential campaign — a contention the White House dismissed as “patently false.”

Mr. Putin said that Russia had hoped America would restrain Georgia, which Moscow accuses of starting the war by attacking South Ossetia on August 7. Instead, he suggested America encouraged the nation’s leadership to try to rein in the separatist region by force.

The U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker, said today that the fighting was prompted by Russian pressure and shelling from South Ossetia.

“We did have lots of contacts with Georgia over a long period of time. And the nature of that has always been to say ‘don’t let yourself get drawn into a military confrontation here,'” Mr. Volker said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. “Georgia found it too hard to hold that line when they were seeing what Russia was preparing to do.”

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Associated Press writers Yuras Karmanau in Tskhinvali, Georgia; Misha Dzhindhzikhashvili and Jim Heintz in Tbilisi, Georgia; Laurent Pirot in Paris; and David Nowak and Maria Danilova in Moscow contributed to this report.