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“The fact is that US citizens were indeed in the area in conflict during the hostilities. It should be admitted that they would do so only following direct orders from their leaders,” Putin said.

“Therefore, they were acting in implementing those orders, doing as they were ordered, and the only one who can give such orders is their leader,” he added.

The comments come in the wake of news that a U.S. passport was found in a building in South Ossetia occupied by Georgian troops.

As we have documented, reports of American mercenaries being captured and found dead inside South Ossetia and Georgia circulated in the days after the conflict began.

Putin also told the CNN interviewer that the Georgian army was armed and trained for the conflict.

“Why hold years of difficult talks and seek complex compromise solutions in inter-ethnic conflicts? It’s easier to arm one side and push it into the murder of the other side, and it’s over,” he said.

“It seems like an easy solution. In reality it turns out that it’s not always so.”

A U.S. passport was found in a building in South Ossetia occupied by Georgian troops, a Russian military spokesperson revealed on Thursday. After Russian peacekeepers cleared the heavily defended building, a passport belonging to a Texan named Michael Lee White was discovered inside.

Deputy Chief of Russia’s General Staff Anatoly Nagovitsyn showed photocopies of the passport to media in a press briefing on Thursday.

“There is a building in Zemonekozi – a settlement to the south of Tskhinval that was fiercely defended by a Georgian special operations squad. Upon clearing the building, Russian peacekeepers recovered, among other documents, an American passport in the name of Michael Lee White of Texas,” said Nagovitsyn.

Neither the owner of the passport nor his remains were found at the scene, despite a thorough search.

“I do not know why he was there, but it is a fact that he was in the building, among Georgian special forces troops,” Nagovitsyn said.

Moscow has issued an extraordinary warning to the West that military assistance to Georgia for use against South Ossetia or Abkhazia would be viewed as a “declaration of war” by Russia.

The extreme rhetoric from the Kremlin’s envoy to NATO came as President Dmitry Medvedev stressed he will make a military response to US missile defence installations in eastern Europe, sending new shudders across countries whose people were once blighted by the Iron Curtain.

And Moscow also emphasised it was closely monitoring what it claims is a build-up of NATO firepower in the Black Sea.

The incendiary warning on Western military involvement in Georgia – where NATO nations have long played a role in training and equipping the small state – came in an interview with Dmitry Rogozin, a former nationalist politician who is now ambassador to the North Atlantic Alliance.

“If NATO suddenly takes military actions against Abkhazia and South Ossetia, acting solely in support of Tbilisi, this will mean a declaration of war on Russia,” he stated.