Georgian refugees, fatigued troops angry at West for no help

GORI, Georgia — In retreat, the Georgian soldiers were so tired they could not keep from stumbling. Their arms were loaded with rucksacks and ammunition boxes; they had dark circles under their eyes. Officers ran up and down the line, barking for them to go faster.

All along the road was grief. Old men pushed heaping wheelbarrows, or led cows by tethers. They drove tractors and rickety Ladas.

As a column of soldiers passed through Gori, a black-robed priest came out of his church and made the sign of the cross again and again.

One soldier, his face a mask of exhaustion, cradled a Kalashnikov.

"We killed as many of them as we could," he said. "But where are our friends?"

It was the question of the day.

As Russian forces massed Sunday, Georgians headed south with whatever they could carry. When they met Western journalists, they all said the same thing. Where is the United States? When is NATO coming?

Since the conflict began, Western leaders have worked frantically to broker a cease-fire. But for Georgians — so boisterously pro-American that Tbilisi, the capital, has a George W. Bush Street — diplomacy fell far short.

Even in the hinterlands, people fleeing South Ossetia saw themselves as trapped between great powers.

Ossetian refugees heading north to Russia gushed their gratitude to the Kremlin. Georgians around Gori spoke of America plaintively, uncertainly.

"Tell your government," said a man named Truber, fresh from the Tbilisi hospital bed where his son was being treated for combat injuries. "If you had said something stronger, we would not be in this."

He was angry — at himself, at Georgia, but mainly at the United States. "If you want to help, you have to help the end," he said.

Meanwhile, the influx of Ossetians into southern Russia continued Sunday, as the police escorted convoys of minibuses up the Zaramakh highway and through the mountain tunnel that is the only route into Russia.

The Russian authorities estimated 34,000 refugees had crossed the border, and 3,000 more evacuations were planned for today.

The Ossetians emerged onto a four-lane highway whose edges had been chopped to pieces by columns of Russian armor. Pyotr Bezhov, who fled the violence with his daughter Oksana on Sunday, blamed the United States.

"You said that the Soviets were an evil empire, but it's you that are the empire," he said. "Not you personally, of course, but your government."

On the other side of the line of battle, Georgians had begun to question their alliance with the United States.

The grimmest among the Georgians were the soldiers, haggard, unshaven and swinging their Kalashnikovs. A group of them had piled onto a flatbed truck, crowding on in such numbers that some were sitting on the roof.

One, who gave his name as Major Georgi, spoke with anger.

"Write exactly what I say," he said. "Over the past few years, I lived in a democratic society. I was happy. And now America and the European Union are spitting on us."