UNITED NATIONS — Calling Russia’s latest actions in Georgia a “dramatic and brutal escalation,” President Bush warned such actions could “threaten” Moscow’s relations with America and Europe. Beyond urging a cease-fire, however, Mr. Bush made no hint of how America intends to counter Russia’s attempt to depose a “duly elected government” in Tbilisi.

President Saakashvili made a desperate plea for international assistance, saying his country was cut in half by Russian troops. His country has been receiving a lot of international support, he said, adding, however, that words are “not enough.” At the U.N. Security Council, American and European diplomats circulated a draft of a proposed resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire and a return to the status quo that existed before the latest hostilities begun in the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia.

Russian troops seemed to be seeking objectives beyond South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia. According to multiple press reports from the ground, tanks, troops, and airplanes moved rapidly through key strategic points in the country, such as the central city of Gori, known as Josef Stalin’s birthplace. “The United Nations has observed that Russian troops had entered into areas of Georgia outside of South Ossetia and Abkhazia,” Belgium’s U.N. ambassador, Jan Grauls, serving as this month’s council president, told reporters, citing a closed-door briefing by two U.N. officials yesterday.

In a brief televised address at the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush cited reports saying Russia has attacked Gori and is now threatening Tbilisi, where Russian planes may soon bomb the civilian airport, he said. Such actions, he said, “would be inconsistent with assurances we have received from Russia that its objectives were limited to restoring the status quo in South Ossetia that existed before fighting began on August the 6th.” It appears that “an effort may be under way to depose” Georgia’s “duly elected government,” Mr. Bush said. “Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century” and it jeopardizes “Russia’s relations with the United States and Europe.”

Russia formally denied that its troops entered Gori, or that it plans to attack Tbilisi and depose the government there. Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, accused America of conducting “Leninist diplomacy” by disclosing publicly a conversation between foreign ministers. Claiming that all his country was seeking was to prevent the Georgian military from assaulting South Ossetia and Abkhazia, where residents have became Russian citizens, Mr. Churkin said Moscow could not “neglect” the people of the two breakaway regions.

“And for what?” he told reporters yesterday, “For good relations with the United States?” He added that America needs the relations with Russia as much as the other way around. But he declined to link the crisis to other world flashpoints, such as Iran, which receives arms and diplomatic support from Moscow.

Mr. Saakashvili, who studied law at Columbia and George Washington Universities in the mid 1990s, has long vied to join NATO, a move that would strengthen Georgia’s alliance with the West and may encourage other former Soviet republics to seek such alliances. Although Georgia lacks oil or natural gas resources of its own, a major pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey goes through its territory, making the country a key station in the supply of a natural resource that is currently Russia’s main source of income.

“No legitimate Russian interests can justify the magnitude of the attack,” the American U.N. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, told reporters yesterday. In his statement, Mr. Bush said that America, along with the European Union and the Organization of Security Cooperation in Europe, was seeking “an immediate cease-fire, the withdrawal of forces from the zone of conflict, a return to the military status quo as of August 6th, and a commitment to refrain from using force.”

President Sarkozy was scheduled to arrive today in Moscow for meetings with Prime Minister Putin, and France had already distributed a draft resolution proposal among Security Council members last night, which according to diplomats here was along the lines Mr. Bush detailed. Diplomats said that America and its European partners were trying to line up as much support as possible from the 15 members of the council before they put their proposal for a vote. In the vote, Russia is likely to veto the proposal.

Circulating the draft yesterday was a “premature” move, Mr. Churkin said, citing Mr. Sarkozy’s visit. A Russian diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said that after two years of dealing with Mr. Saakashvili, Moscow no longer considers him a viable partner for negotiations and plans to drag the Georgian before an international tribunal.