By TOM LASSETER
McClatchy Newspapers
TIRDZNISI, Georgia - The Russian fighter jet screamed low to the earthand peeled off so quickly that the bomb wasn't visible until it hitthe ground. The explosion shook everything and sent a shower of debrisflying over the head of a young Georgian soldier.
The soldier, lying against an embankment on the side of the road,shouted in a panicked voice for everyone to stay still. His palms wereflat on the dirt in front of him. "It's Russian MiGs," the soldiersaid, his eyes wide.
For three days, Russian jets and bombers have unleashed a massiveaerial campaign against Georgian forces that, more than anything, dramatically changed the war's direction.Georgia's ground troops couldn't do much against Russian aircraft,whose repeated bombing runs drove them from Tskhinvali on Sunday andchased them along the road toward the town of Gori. In the earlymorning hours Tuesday, it suddenly seemed possible that all thatremained of the war was for the Russians to brush past Gori intoTbilisi, Georgia's capital.
At first, news of Russia's aerial attacks came in fragments. Anairfield was hit, a radar station demolished. But by Monday, as bombsfell among the withdrawing Georgian forces, it was only too clear whatthe Russians had been up to.
The early strikes had made it impossible for Georgians, who in thewar's first day had shot down four Russian aircraft, to mount aneffective response. Now Russian jets could dominate the skies.Col. Gen. Anatoly Nagovitsin, the deputy head of the Russian military's general staff, put it bluntly: "I can report on Russiansupremacy in the airspace. Georgian aircraft stopped flying.
"Outside Tskhinvali, Georgian soldiers huddled beneath trees andbridges, trying to stay out of the line of sight of passing Russianjets. In addition to military trucks, troops were being moved aroundin civilian buses and vans. In Gori, soldiers worked out of auniversity building.They had to hide; there was no answer to the Su-25 fighter jets, TU-22bombers and others streaking nearby, looking for prey.
"We have good artillery, but not good antiaircraft systems," said Sgt.Ucha Chulukhadze, a Georgian soldier who was standing in a smallshelter on the side of the road. To speak with a reporter, he andother soldiers insisted on walking across the street, where there wasshade and they'd be less visible.
The soldiers looked tired and unsure what would happen next."If no one stops them" - the Russians - "then they will do worse herethan what they did in Chechnya," said Eldar Durglishnti, a reservistwho had been called up for the fighting.A group of Georgian soldiers who were standing next to a truck downthe road, its tires flat, heard the boom of an airstrike in thedistance and scrambled to take cover.
"It's coming again," one of them hollered, looking at the sky.Later in the afternoon, a Georgian sergeant was sitting on a curbsidein Gori, recounting what he had seen Sunday in Tskhinvali before hisunit retreated. Moving his hand through the air like a plane, hemimicked the sound of bombs falling."There people were dying," said the soldier, who gave only his firstname, Dato. "They dropped bombs everywhere ... they destroyed us.
"A group of people had gathered at the hospital across the street, manyof them female soldiers, to check the lists of wounded and dead postedon a wall. Tracing the names with their fingers, the women spoke inlow voices.An ambulance doctor, Levan Makashvili, was reading a newspaper in thehospital's parking lot and trying to keep his mind off the war for afew moments.
The aftermath of the bombings, he said, was terrible."The ones with head wounds," he said in a matter-of-fact tone, "theyfrequently die."
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