KARALETI, GEORGIA - Russian Col. Igor Konoshenko looked at the building that had been burned by looters -- who'd entered the town earlier this month after Russian troops drove through -- and quickly tried to shift the reporters' attention elsewhere.

"The other buildings are fine; look at them," he said, waving his hand assertively.

That sort of redirection was typical of a seven-and-a-half-hour tour that the Russians conducted Sunday for reporters in the occupied countryside of Georgia.

By the end of the day, the Russians had made it obvious they weren't interested in revealing what transpired after their forces pushed the Georgian military out of the breakaway province of South Ossetia and marched to the center of the country.

Russia has sought to closely manage press movement across South Ossetia and outlying villages. That's been especially true for reporters operating out of Georgia's capital, Tbilisi. Russian soldiers have routinely turned journalists away from the areas.

Even on Sunday, when reporters were invited on a tour by the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner, Thomas Hammarberg, Russian officials demanded that reporters stay with the group.

"The thing is that foreign correspondents we take from Tbilisi do not move around," said Alexander Machevsky, an escort who said he was working for the press service of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. He added: "No foreign correspondents have been shot here, and we would like to keep it that way."

In Karaleti, Russian soldiers watched warily as locals came up to reporters and explained how the building was set aflame. "The Ossetians did this," said Manana Chidliashvili, whose son used to live in one of the burned-out apartments. "I'm afraid of the Russian soldiers. ... If they didn't let the Ossetians in to destroy everything, who did?"

A few minutes later, Konoshenko yelled that it was time to get back in the Russian troop transport truck: "Move! Move! Move! Faster!"

The truck whipped by the next village, Tkviavi, where residents had told a McClatchy Newspapers reporter Saturday that Ossetian militias gunned down people in the streets and ransacked many homes. Viewed through the approximately three-inch tall windows of the transport vehicle, the charred houses were just a blur.

To the north, in Tskhinvali, the truck stopped in an area particularly hard hit by the Georgian push into the city and the Russian response. Houses were reduced to skeletal frames or rubble. It was the very image of what Russia has contended happened across Tskhinvali -- that Georgians had destroyed the entire city in a genocidal rampage against Ossetians.

"There is no city anymore," Konoshenko said solemnly.

But in getting to that block -- close to the edge of the city where fighting between the Georgians and Russians was intense -- the truck passed apartment buildings and rows of houses that, while damaged in places by heavy fighting, were still intact.

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