Russian President Dmitry Medvedev also held talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao, a key ally, as Britain’s foreign minister travelled to Ukraine and warned the country not to provoke Russia.

Russia’s military said it would carefully monitor a “build-up” of NATO naval ships in the Black Sea, amid anger at Moscow’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, regions that broke from Georgian control in the early 1990s. Tensions ran high with a spokesman for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin saying Russia was taking unspecified measures there to counter its fears that Washington was rearming Georgia under cover of supplying aid.

“Certainly some measures of precaution are being taken.... Let’s hope we do not see any direct confrontation in that,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, adding: “It’s not a common practice to deliver humanitarian aid using battleships.”

One of three ships sent by Washington to deliver relief supplies after this month’s five-day conflict between Georgia and Russia — the US Coast Guard cutter Dallas — docked in Georgia on Wednesday.

The West says some ships in the Black Sea are part of planned exercises while others are delivering aid to Georgia, where about 100,000 people were displaced by the conflict, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

Russia moved its own naval forces to the Abkhaz port of Sukhumi, where they got a rapturous reception from Abkhaz leader Sergei Bagapsh, who downed a toast from an ornate drinking horn with Russian officers.

Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, warned that any NATO attack on the Moscow-backed regions would “mean a declaration of war on Russia,” in an interview with Russian newspaper Vremya Novostei.

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