As the financial storm spread, some of the 27 nations that make up the European Union have broken ranks to protect their own citizens and banks.

Russia accused Georgia of “seeking to provoke new hostilities” even as Russian peacekeepers were dismantling checkpoints outside South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The growing crisis has underlined the difficulty of taking concerted action in Europe because its economies are far more integrated than its governing structures.

Despite their pledge, the leaders of Europe’s largest economies failed to offer a systemwide answer to a credit crisis that has forced them to bail out several banks in just the past week.

Most German citizens are unhappy about the notion of paying billions for bad mortgage bets made by their financial institutions.

The E.U. began deploying monitors to Georgia despite earlier threats by the Russian military to bar them from buffer zones around Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Russian military officials said the monitors would not be allowed to work immediately in the buffer zone that surrounds South Ossetia, the breakaway Georgian enclave.

Russian military officials said the monitors would not be allowed to work immediately in the buffer zone that surrounds South Ossetia, the breakaway Georgian enclave.

The parties benefited from the severe discontent among citizens of the small Alpine nation, winning almost a third of the vote in parliamentary elections on Sunday.

Candidates loyal to authoritarian President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko won an overwhelming majority of parliamentary seats in a closely-watched election.