Russia continues its bellicose approach to the Georgia crisis. On Wednesday, it warned Western countries against building up naval forces in the region.

As the United States continued to ship humanitarian aid to needy Georgians, Russia sent three missile boats into a Georgian port. The U.S. vessel carrying aid from the port of Poti, which is still controlled by Russian troops, avoided a confrontation with the Russians by docking in another Black Sea port, Batumi, south of the area where most of the fighting between Russia and Georgia occurred.

The American aid was loaded onto trucks for Georgians who are displaced by the fighting — there are tens of thousands in this plight.

Yet Russia is opposing such efforts. The Interfax news agency quoted Russian Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn as saying: "Can NATO — which is not a state located in the Black Sea — continuously increase its group of forces and systems there? It turns out that it cannot."

On Tuesday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recognized the Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. The United States and most Western countries insist that the breakaway regions remain part of Georgia. Yet many South Ossetians have ethnic links to Russia and have talked about being part of the larger country.

Georgian politicians, of course, are adamantly against losing the breakaway provinces.

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband likened the Georgia offensive to Russia's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and called on Moscow to "change course."

Russian President Medvedev declared that his country is "not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a Cold War."

The West faces a real task in negotiating a satisfactory resolution to this deplorable state of affairs.