The Russian soldiers peered nervously from a freshly dug trench at hundreds of Georgian protesters who were waving placards and yelling that they should leave.

Positioned by a bridge at the entrance to the strategic port city of Poti in western Georgia, these troops represent the new face of Russian occupation. Five armoured vehicles stood behind them as a Russian flag flew overhead next to one declaring the area a peacekeeping post.

The Kremlin insists that the Russian Army has left Georgian soil and only such “peacekeepers” remain. But Russia’s checkpoints occupy key positions along the main highway from Poti to Tbilisi, the capital, giving Moscow a potential stranglehold on Georgia’s economy and an excuse for future military intervention. Two soldiers with blue “peacekeeper” arm-bands stood before the demonstrators, one filming with a small video camera as the crowd chanted “Georgia, Georgia” and “Russians go home”. They refused to allow The Times to approach to ask what their orders were.

The Times had travelled to Poti in a Defence Ministry helicopter organised by Georgian officials keen to show journalists the continued Russian presence in the Black Sea port, far from the conflict zone in South Ossetia where the crisis began. The flight also exposed Georgian nervousness over the possibility of an incident sparking renewed hostilities.

Instead of taking the most direct route from Tbilisi, which would have followed the highway where Russian peacekeepers were dug in, the helicopter made for Batumi 50 miles to the south, then dog-legged up over the sea to Poti. It flew low on the 90-minute journey, hugging the mountainous landscape and skimming over forests as if anxious to avoid radar detection.

There was ample evidence of Russia’s destructive presence in the city. At Poti’s main commercial port, a cluster bomb had exploded against a wall 100 metres from four giant storage tanks filled with aviation fuel. Officials said that a direct hit would have levelled much of the surrounding district.

Buildings at the port, which is operated by an Arab company, were scarred by shrapnel and a heavy-goods vehicle had been peppered with bullets during a raid in which soldiers had stolen four Humvee vehicles belonging to the United States Army. Two port employees had been killed and four wounded.

The nearby coastguard headquarters had been ransacked, Russian soldiers smashing doors systematically from room to room and trashing the furniture.

Explosives had been used to blow the metal door leading to the medical unit, where all the equipment had been stolen and a message left on a white board that read “Georgian bitches, die pederast cocks”.

Rezo Managadze, who witnessed the wrecking spree, said: “They were a hundred of them loading up their trucks with anything they could carry. They came four or five times.”

Pairs of Russian army boots lay on the floor of the storehouse, discarded for Georgia’s better quality Nato-standard brands as soldiers looted storage containers of supplies.

The hulks of three coastguard vessels cluttered the harbour. The guns of the Dioscuria, a former Greek Navy missile boat named after the brothers of Helen of Troy, pointed forlornly above the water, a chunk of metal from its hull tossed on to the harbour-side by the force of an explosive device planted by a Russian raiding party.

The Ayety, a former minehunter donated by Germany, listed badly to starboard, while the burnt-out wreck of the Tbilisi was almost completely submerged. Captain Bezo Shengelia, the base commander, said that Russian jets had bombed on August 8, the second night of the war, killing five of his men and wounding 33. “The next day they had ships blocking the harbour and then Russians came several times on to the base to blow up our vessels,” he said.

The base had been evacuated of the 700 servicemen normally working there after the initial bombing raid.

There was a similar scene at an army barracks raided by soldiers searching for a mobile radar station. The Georgians had fled with the radar before the Russians arrived, but the barracks was looted anyway.

Now the “peacekeepers” remain at the city’s northern edge, capable of blowing up the bridge over the river Rioni that connects Poti to the main highway if instructed from Moscow. Other Russian positions have been reported south of Poti and at nearby Teklati, Khobi, Menji and Chkhorotsku.

Military chiefs do not bother to dispute that Poti is far beyond the security zone around South Ossetia that they claim the right to establish against Georgian forces. Anatoli Nogovitsyn, deputy Chief of the General Staff, told reporters: “Should we sit behind the fence? What use would we be then? They will drive around in Hummers, move munitions around in trucks, and are we supposed to just count them?”

Among those protesting at the Russian presence on Saturday was 29-year-old Fatuna Robakidze, a policewoman in Poti and one of 200,000 refugees expelled from Abkhazia in the first war in 1992.

Surveying the soldiers ahead of her, she said: “If they receive an order tomorrow to blockade Poti, then they will do it. They say they are peacekeepers but everyone can see that they are occupiers.”

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