Georgians turn out to protest at Russia

Huge crowds surged into the streets of Georgia’s capital Tbilisi today to demonstrate against Russia.

Others gathered at a Russian checkpoint where soldiers were guarding the “security zone” Moscow claimed for itself after last month’s war.

Large demonstrations also took place in Poti, the Black Sea port city where Russian forces have a checkpoint on the outskirts, and in Gori, which had been bombed and then occupied by Russian forces as fighting spread from the separatist republic of South Ossetia into Georgia proper.

Several hundred people marched from Gori to the Russian checkpoint at Karaleti, about four miles north.

No figures for total turnout nationwide were immediately available, but the television station Rustavi-2 said more than a million people participated in the demonstrations that also included the cities of Kutaisi and Zugdidi.

The crowd that jammed Tbilisi’s main avenue alone appeared to have at least 100,000 people. The demonstration in the capital dispersed by early evening, although horn-honking cars with national flags brandished from the windows continued to cruise the streets.

“I’m very proud of my people ... We will be free, we will prevail,” Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said amid the clamour at the capital’s Freedom Square.

“I want to tell the whole world that not only will Russian imperialism not be victorious, but in Georgia the idea of Russian imperialism will be buried once and for all,” he said.

The demonstration started with hand-holding people forming “human chains” in an echo of the so-called Baltic Chain of 1989, in which residents of then-Soviet Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia stretched the length of their homelands to protest at Soviet occupation.

The demonstrators in Tbilisi appeared to be largely in high spirits, using the event more as an expression of national pride than of anger.

But for all the verve and unity, some demonstrators questioned whether the day would amount to anything more than a vivid show.

The demonstration of unity could help Mr Saakashvili deflect possible opposition criticism. So far, opposition parties have not publicly questioned the wisdom of launching the assault on Tskhinvali – a battle Georgia had no chance of winning – but the issue seems likely to arise as memories of the war’s torments fade.