Georgian troops cower in face of air assault

TIRDZNISI, GEORGIA -- The Russian fighter jet screamed low to the ground and peeled off so quickly that the bomb wasn't visible until it hit the ground. The explosion shook everything and sent a shower of debris flying 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 were flat on the dirt in front of him. "It's Russian MiGs," the soldier said, his eyes wide.

For three days, Russian jets and bombers have unleashed a massive aerial campaign against Georgian forces that has dramatically changed the war's direction.

Until Russian jets showed up, Georgian tanks and infantry looked to be on their way to defeating rebel forces in Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway province of South Ossetia.

But Georgia's ground troops couldn't do much against Russian aircraft, whose repeated bombing runs drove them from Tskhinvali on Sunday and chased them along the road toward the town of Gori. In the early morning hours Tuesday, it suddenly seemed possible that all that remained of the war was for the Russians to brush past Gori into Tbilisi, Georgia's capital.

At first, news of Russia's aerial attacks came in fragments. An airfield was hit, a radar station demolished. But by Monday, as bombs fell among the withdrawing Georgian forces, it was only too clear what the Russians had been up to.

The early strikes had made it impossible for Georgians, who in the war's first day had shot down four Russian aircraft, to mount an effective response. Now Russian jets dominated the skies.

Col. Gen. Anatoly Nagovitsin, the deputy head of the Russian military's general staff, put it bluntly: "I can report on Russian supremacy in the airspace. Georgian aircraft stopped flying."

Outside Tskhinvali, Georgian soldiers huddled beneath trees and bridges, trying to stay out of the line of sight of passing Russian jets. In addition to military trucks, troops were being moved around in civilian buses and vans. In Gori, soldiers worked out of a university building.

They had to hide; there was no answer to the Su-25 fighter jets, TU-22 bombers 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 small shelter on the side of the road.

To speak with a reporter, he and other soldiers insisted on walking across the street, where there was shade 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 here than what they did in Chechnya," said Eldar Durglishnti, a reservist who had been called up for the fighting.

When a car load of journalists started to leave, one of the soldiers walked up to the window with a plea: Call the Red Cross and tell it that he was getting cell phone calls from soldiers who were stuck in bunkers in Tskhinvali.

A group of Georgian soldiers who were standing next to a truck down the road, its tires flat, heard the boom of an airstrike in the distance and scrambled to take cover.

"It's coming again," one of them hollered, looking at the sky.