August 11, 2008
The people of Gori tell our correspondent of betrayal by the West
(David dzinarishvili/REUTERS)
A mother and child in the ravaged Georgian city of Gori, where Russianjets bombed apartment blocksTony HalpinAs a Russian jet bombed fields around his village, Djimali Avago, aGeorgian farmer, asked me: “Why won’t America and Nato help us? Ifthey won’t help us now, why did we help them in Iraq?”A similar sense of betrayal coursed through the conversations of manyGeorgians here yesterday as their troops retreated under shellfire andthe Russian Army pressed forward.Smoke rose as Russian artillery fire exploded less than half a milefrom the bridge marking South Ossetia’s border with Georgia. A groupof Georgian soldiers hastily abandoned their lorry after its wheelswere shot out and ran across the border.Georgian troops looked disheartened as they regrouped around tanklines about 2km from the border. Many said that they had been fightingin Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, until the early hourswhen they were suddenly ordered to withdraw from the breakaway region.“They told us to come out – I don’t know why – but some of our guysare still out there in the fields,” one soldier told The Times. “Iwant to go back. If we lose South Ossetia now, it won’t be for everbecause we will never surrender our land.”President Saakashvili of Georgia has ordered a complete ceasefire andoffered talks to the Russians. Despite this, the sound of gunfire andshelling could be clearly heard along the border zone last night.Terrified civilians have fled in their thousands, convinced thatRussia will not stop at the border but sweep into Georgia.Gori, normally a bustling city of 50,000 people, is largely desertedafter Russian airstrikes at the weekend. Scores of people wereabandoning their homes and loading possessions into vehicles orcarrying what they could on foot. “There is a lot of panic. Manypeople have left and I am thinking of joining them. My bags arealready packed,” Georgi, a 56-year-old resident of Tirdznisi, said.“We are afraid that the Russians will come here and kill us. Peoplewould not go if we had a strong army but they don’t believe in ourarmy any more.”Iago Jokhadze abandoned his village of Ergneti, close to Tskhinvali,after it was bombed by Russian jets yesterday. Fighting back tears, hesaid: “I have left everything, I don’t even have another shirt. If theRussians stay, then I can never return. We’re afraid of what theRussians can do.”Miriyan Gogolashvili, of Tkviav, said: “The Russians will be heretomorrow. They want to show us and the world how powerful they are.Tomorrow it will be Ukraine and nobody in the West is doing anythingto stop them. Why were our soldiers in Kosovo and Iraq if we don’t getany help from the West now?” he asked.In Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, refugees from the fighting told howRussian helicopters bombed homes in Tshkinvali and neighbouringvillages. Some spent days in basements before emerging to discoverthat their communities had been obliterated. Mzia Sabashvili, who hidfor three days, said: “I know that lots of my neighbours are dead. Ihave no idea who is left.”The Russians paid little heed to those in their way. A vehiclecarrying observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperationin Europe was shot at by a sniper near Tskhinvali. The bullet crackedthe toughened glass of the passenger window, where a British officerhad been sitting.In Gori, where a statue of Stalin, the city’s most famous son, stillstands in the main square, relatives scoured lists of the wounded putup outside the main hospital. More than 120 people were admittedyesterday in addition to the 456 treated since fighting erupted onFriday. The chief surgeon said that civilians, including a pregnantwoman, had died of their injuries.Scores of soldiers milled around on the road outside. One said thatthey had all been in Tskhinvali but were now preparing to pull out ofGori. “The situation was very bad there but we were ready to stay.Russia is the enemy of the world,” he said.
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