The Russian soldier felling poplars with a chainsaw did not hear when General Borisov, his commander-in-chief, hurtled up in a military vehicle at Kareleti, a checkpoint 13km from the town of Gori in central Georgia.

After a brief glance at a sparkling stockpile of new barbed wire at the roadside, the general sped north into the new buffer zone Russian forces created last week round Georgia's breakaway enclave of South Ossetia.