By Aydar Buribayev MOSCOW, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Russia's top military brass said on Tuesday it doubted that NATO ships were delivering only humanitarian aid to Georgia and said Moscow was worried about a build up of alliance warships in the Black Sea. Moscow, already angry at NATO expansion close to its borders, has been dismayed by the West's support for Georgia after Tbilisi tried to retake a pro-Russian breakaway region, sparking a massive Russian counter-attack. The United States said that two warships would dock at the Georgian port of Poti on Wednesday to deliver humanitarian aid. "The extraordinary level of activity by NATO navies is perplexing for us," said Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy head of Russia's general staff. "The increase in NATO forces in the Black Sea is worrying us," he told reporters at a daily briefing. Speaking before the Kremlin recognised the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states, Nogovitsyn said that 10 NATO ships were already in the Black Sea and that another eight would arrive in the near future. "These eight (ships) are not there with a humanitarian cargo but with a different objective," he said. "It is very hard to believe that all these previous trips were used for humanitarian help as was stated." Nogovitsyn said claims to the contrary were lies and questioned why warships were being used to deliver aid such as nappies that he said could be bought in any Georgian market. Russian military officials say that a build up of NATO ships in the Black Sea, traditionally controlled by Russia, has increased chances of the conflict in Georgia escalating into a standoff with NATO. RIA news agency quoted an unnamed source in Russian military intelligence as saying that NATO ships in the Black Sea were armed with more than 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles as well as Harpoon anti-ship missiles. The United States, Turkey, Spain, Germany and Poland have ships in the Black Sea, according to Russian news agencies. Nogovitsyn also hinted at rich intelligence pickings for Russian security services from a convoy of Hummer vehicles that were seized in Georgia. "We found out that it was not by chance that the Pentagon was so worried about the fate of its Hummers," he said. "We found a lot of very interesting things in these Hummers." (Writing by Guy Faulconbridge, editing by Jon Boyle and Meg Clothier)
A Russian soldier occupies a check point in Mosabruni, just inside South Ossetia, after Georgian troops withdrew and Russian troops moved into the area, August 26, 2008. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ...
