Georgia on Wednesday warned Russia against taking further steps to integrate its separatist region of Abkhazia, saying it would create new security problems in Europe.

President Giorgi Margvelashvili issued an "emergency statement" after the leader of the Kremlin-backed rebel statelet on Monday submitted a draft agreement to its local parliament that would dramatically strengthen ties with Moscow.

A U.S. warship docked in Georgia's Black Sea port of Batumi Tuesday, the U.S. embassy said, as tensions in the region remain high over Russia's role in the conflict in Ukraine.

The arrival of the USS Mount Whitney for a five-day visit "reaffirms the United States' commitment to strengthening ties with NATO allies and partners like Georgia," the U.S. embassy said in a statement.

From an empty flat overlooking the shattered remains of eastern Ukraine's biggest airport, Givi is leading an all-out assault against the last government outpost in the main pro-Russian stronghold.

The camouflage-clad guerrilla, a Russian tricolour on his arm, heads one of two units tasked with flushing out government soldiers from a site at the heart of the six-month war, which has already claimed 3,400 lives.

A Georgian court has ordered the seizure of the property of former president Mikheil Saakashvili and his family after he was charged with abuse of office, his lawyer said Friday.

"The court ruled to seize property belonging to Mikheil Saakashvili and his wife, mother and grandmother but gave no justification for the decision," Saakashvili's lawyer, Otar Kakhidze, said.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel pledged on Sunday to boost military ties with Georgia amid the unfolding crisis in Ukraine.

"Our shared goal is to build even stronger military ties in the future, particularly in the light of Russia's blatant aggression in Ukraine," Hagel told a press conference in Tbilisi.

An opposition leader emerged victorious in the presidential vote in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia, authorities said on Monday, in an election denounced as illegal by the European Union and Georgia.

Raoul Khadjimba, 56, the leader of the republic's main opposition group, won Sunday's election outright in the first round by taking 50.57 percent of the vote, the local election commission said.

Voters in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia went to the polls on Sunday to choose a president from two former KGB trainees in an election already denounced as illegal by the European Union and Georgia. 

Abkhazia, which is recognized only by a handful of states including Russia, called snap elections following the resignation of former president Alexander Ankvab in June.

Georgian prosecutors on Tuesday filed criminal charges against former president Mikheil Saakashvili for allegedly ordering a savage beating of an opposition lawmaker who suffered traumatic brain injury and broken bones.

The lawmaker, Valery Gelashvili, had given a newspaper interview just before the 2005 beating in which he made comments Saakashvili maybe found insulting, the Georgian state prosecutor's office said.

Georgia's Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili announced an unexpected cabinet reshuffle on Monday that will require all government ministers to face a fresh confidence vote in parliament.

"I decided to make changes in the cabinet's composition," Garibashvili told a news conference, adding that seven cabinet members, though no key ministers, will be replaced.

Georgia on Sunday held ceremonies to bury Eduard Shevardnadze, a former Soviet diplomat hailed internationally for helping to end the Cold War but a controversial president at home.

Hundreds of people flocked to Tbilisi's Trinity Cathedral to pay their last respects to Shevardnadze, who died on Monday aged 86. He was later buried next to his wife at his home in the city.