Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Tbilisi, capital of Georgia, on Thursday demanding the resignation of Mikheil Saakashvili, the president, who led his country into a disastrous war with Russia last August over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Popular discontent has risen since the war when foreign investors fled, triggering an economic downturn now intensified by the global financial crisis.