An EU peace plan for Georgia and Russia struggled to take hold, as the concept of having both sides retreat to their original positions ran into the stark reality of Russian dominance on the battlefield.
By Wednesday morning, Georgia reported Russian tanks moving into its key central city of Gori outside the breakaway province of South Ossetia at the epicentre of fighting. It also lost its last stronghold in another separatist province, Abkhazia.
Georgian troops had completely pulled out of a small section of Abkhazia which they controlled - a development that reduces further significant fighting in Abkhazia's Kodori Gorge but leaves the entire area in the hands of the Russian-backed separatists.
Georgia insisted its troops had been driven out of Abkhazia by Russian forces, while the Russians insisted that separatist forces and not the Russian military had done the job.
The claim rang hollow - an AP reporter saw 135 Russian military vehicles heading toward the gorge Tuesday and Russia is the separatists' military patron - but the effect was clear. Abkhazia was out of Georgian hands and it would take more than an EU peace plan to get it back in.
One of two separatists areas trying to leave Georgia for Russia, Abkhazia lies close to the heart of many Russians.
It's Black Sea coast was a favourite vacation spot for the Soviet elite, and the province is just down the coast from Sochi, the Russian resort that will host the 2014 Olympics.
In central Georgia, about 50 Russian tanks entered Gori on Wednesday morning, according to a top Georgian official.
The city of 50,000 sits on Georgia's only significant east-west road and is 15 miles south of a second separatist area, South Ossetia.
Russia has handed out passports to most in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and stationed peacekeepers in the both regions since the early 1990s.
Georgia wants the Russian peacekeepers out, but Russian President Dmitry Medvedev just Tuesday insisted they would stay.
Alexander Lomaia, the head of Georgia's national security Council, said Russian tanks entered the city about 9.45am Wednesday (1545 AEST), about eight hours after Georgia accepted the EU peace plan.
Complete confirmation of Lomaia's claim was not possible, but an APTN television crew in Gori saw some Russian armoured vehicles Wednesday morning near a military base there. Puffs of smoke in the air indicated some military action.
A Russian government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorised to give his name denied the Georgian report, saying there were no Russian troops in Gori.
Lomaia said Russian troops also still held ground in the western town of Zugdidi near Abkhazia, controlling the main highway in the region.
Georgia's President Mikhail 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 US ally.
Saakashvili, speaking to 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.
Georgia's Health Minister Alexander Kvitashvili said Wednesday that 175 Georgians had died in five days of air and ground attacks that left homes in smoldering ruins.
He said many died on Tuesday in a Russian raid of Gori just hours before Medvedev declared fighting halted.
An AP reporter also saw heavy damage inflicted to a Georgian village near Gori by a raid Tuesday. Two men and a woman in the village of Ruisi, in undisputed Georgian territory just outside South Ossetia, were killed and another five were wounded.
"I always hide in the basement," said one villager, the 70-year old Vakhtang Chkhekvadze as he was pulled off a window frame torn by an explosion. "But this time the explosion came so abruptly, I don't remember what happened afterward."
The first relief flight from the UN 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 centre. Near the city centre, 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 footpath nearby. Several residential areas seemed to have little damage beyond shattered windows.
A poster hanging nearby showed 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.
The Russia-Georgia dispute reached the international courts, with the Georgian security council saying it had sued for ethnic cleansing. Medvedev reiterated accusations against Georgia of genocide.
Russian officers accompanying journalists visiting Tskhinvali argued that the battle damage showed Georgian troops specifically targeted civilians. But the worst damage was confined to the area around the government centre, and several residential areas seemed to have little damage, except for shattered windows, perhaps from bomb concussions.
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 neighbour thinks it can fight us. We are telling it no," said Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who was joined by the leaders of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine at the rally. Kaczynski says Russia wanted a return to "old times."