At a military checkpoint that should not exist a Russian lieutenant apologised for being unable to offer any tea. “We don’t have electricity right now,” he said as he led The Times into a fortified compound behind the unrecognised border between Georgia and its breakaway region of South Ossetia.

At least three Russian tanks are dug in around the checkpoint on a narrow mountain road leading to the town of Akhalgori, their guns pointing south towards Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi.

Eight months after President Medvedev signed a peace agreement to end the war with Georgia last August, Russia’s military occupation continues. The deal brokered by President Sarkozy required all sides to withdraw to positions held before fighting broke out.

Although part of South Ossetia, the Akhalgori district was under Georgia’s control when the war began on August 7. Most of those living in the town and its surrounding villages were ethnic Georgians.

It is now firmly in the grip of Ossetian separatists backed by Russian military muscle. Russian troops milled about near the checkpoint or stared from sandbagged observation posts as Ossetian militia men inspected cars crossing the border.

The word “Russia” has been spray-painted on a concrete security barrier placed across the road. Tucked into a dip of land behind the checkpoint the Russian Army has set up camouflaged tents and three long rows of portable cabins that provide accommodation for its soldiers.

Inside one of the sparsely furnished cabins the young lieutenant insisted that civilians, both Georgian and Ossetian, passed freely across the border to trade goods and visit family members. Human Rights Watch saw things very differently in November, accusing Russia of failing to prevent Ossetian militias “running wild attacking ethnic Georgians in Akhalgori”.

Vehicles with Georgian numberplates did pass through the checkpoint, although soldiers barred this newspaper from entering Akhalgori. The Russians also turned back a team from the European Union’s Monitoring Mission, a 200-strong force overseeing the ceasefire.

Steve Bird, the mission’s spokesman in Georgia, said that monitors had received reports that Georgian farmers were unable to pass checkpoints to reach their land, which had been taken over by Ossetians.

The monitors stepped up patrols this week after recording an increase in Russian troop movements near the border that coincided with the start of opposition protests in Tbilisi calling on President Saakashvili to resign.

While acknowledging that Russia is breaking the ceasefire, the international community appears unwilling to press the point. Nato restored relations with Russia last month that were suspended during the war and President Obama has made clear that while he and Mr Medvedev disagreed over Georgia, his priority was to improve ties with Moscow.

Mr Bird said that the priority was to implement confidence-building measures agreed during recent negotiations in Switzerland. “We have made it very clear that their checkpoints are not in the right place,” he said.

“We are still putting pressure on them to move back but the Russians have decided that this is a strategic point and have put a lot of troops there. The Georgians have put a lot of troops there too.” The Kremlin sees things differently, arguing that Mr Medvedev recognised the independence of South Ossetia after the war and that Russia has a bilateral agreement to station troops on its territory. Russia has stationed 3,800 troops in South Ossetia and Georgia’s other breakaway region of Abkhazia.

Eka Tkeshelashvili, secretary of Georgia’s National Security Council, said: “Russia signed an international agreement and is not living up to it, so the principle of Russia living up to its agreements is not being observed.”

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