Three shots rang out over the orchard, testament to the tension on Georgia’s new front line.

To the policemen hidden behind concrete blocks barely 50m from the Russian border guards and South Ossetian paramilitaries facing them across no man’s land it was just part of the daily provocation.

“They shoot across the checkpoint every night. They are playing like little boys,” a Georgian officer said. “They drink together and when they are drunk they don’t care about anything, they just shoot.”

After years of tit-for-tat violence in the separatist region of South Ossetia the fighting escalated into a war last August. Thousands of Russian troops and tanks poured through a tunnel in the Caucasus Mountains and ethnic Georgians fled their villages or were killed in the fighting.

The Government in Tbilisi and those driven from their homes fear another escalation as Russia once again flexes its muscle on the world stage. On Monday 8,500 Russian troops, 200 tanks, 450 armoured cars and 250 artillery pieces will return to the Caucasus for a military exercise.

Georgia says that some will join thousands of troops stationed in the country’s two separatist regions since last summer.

The West may not discover the outcome because last week Moscow blocked the continued presence of international observers in Abkhazia. Checkpoints that allow civilians back to their villages in parts of South Ossetia are tightening controls.

Diplomats, who were caught off-guard by the invasion last year, may play down the prospects of another war but those living in the shadow of the front line are sure that it is coming.

“They kicked out these observers because they could not do what they wanted and now we are afraid that something will start again. That is why they kicked out the observers. They are preparing for war,” Givi Tseveteli said.

Mr Tseveteli, who has two children, has every reason to be scared. Georgians were driven from his village of Ergneti, within sight of the South Ossetian capital, by militia who looted and burnt 120 homes in what they described as ethnic cleansing.

His villa is a charred shell and the family’s possessions reduced to ash. Like other villagers, however, he has moved back because the temporary accommodation where the family were staying closed. They now live in a shelter in their garden. “We have no where else to go. We have to stay here,” he said.

Villagers cannot work the fields because of unexploded cluster bombs and mines. They rely on aid to survive. “We are afraid. There is shooting every night,” Mr Tseveteli’s wife, Darejani, said. “We hope and dream that we can stay here in peace.”

Their plight, and that of 20,000 Georgians still living in camps after the war, has heightened a political crisis with daily street protests demanding that the Government go.

Critics say that President Saakashvili fell into a Russian trap when his troops began fighting in South Ossetia, giving Russia the excuse to invade. They say that he is an unpredictable leader who mistook Western support as a guarantee of protection from Russia. Riot police have suppressed protest marches violently, adding to the sense of insecurity.

The Government is wary of Russia’s latest tactics. “Of course we are worried because this scheme is exactly the same as it was last year,” David Bakradze, the parliamentary Speaker and a close ally of the President, told The Times. “Russians are increasing their military presence, Russians are conducting large-scale military exercises, directly threatening Georgia, and they are making all the time statements that Georgians are concentrating forces and Georgians are beginning to start the war and we have to respond.”

The President is far from certain that peace will reign. “Ask me something more simple,” he told The Times when asked if Georgia was safe from another Russian advance. “I do not know what is playing out in Vladimir Putin’s [the Russian Prime Minister’s] head. I think everybody but him wants peace.”

In the absence of military observers inside the breakaway regions, 200 EU monitors remain on the Georgian side of the unrecognised border, guarding against war.

Their political masters are confident that Russia, which is keen to build bridges with the US Administration, will hold back. There is always an element of doubt in their assurances, however — an acknowledgement that the personal power plays between Moscow and Tbilisi can produce a combustible mixture.

“I do not see the level of negative provocations that we saw last summer. But all things are possible. At the end of the day you can never tell,” one Western diplomat said.

Another noted that the Russian troops in South Ossetia were already less than one hour from Tbilisi. It was, he said, like living in London with Russian tanks lined up in Windsor.

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