Mr Putin said that events surrounding the arrests of four Russian soldiers in Georgia last week reminded him of Stalin’s notorious henchman Lavrenty Beria, who ran the secret police at the height of the Soviet leader’s purges.

Mr Putin’s remarks were calculated to be highly insulting because Beria, like Stalin, was Georgian. The KGB chief routinely had people killed or arrested on trumped-up charges at Stalin’s behest.

He was also notoriously violent and would cruise the streets of Moscow looking for young women to rape and occasionally kill.

The remarks were the first by Mr Putin since Georgia arrested the men for suspected espionage last Wednesday. A court in Tbilisi formally charged the four with spying on Friday, and ordered them to be detained for two months, along with seven Georgian citizens accused of treason.

Under Georgian law, espionage is punishable by up to ten years in prison. Georgian officials have broadcast videotapes that they say showed that the servicemen were intelligence agents gathering information about military installations, a charge dismissed by Moscow.

Russian ministers and media have reacted furiously to what they regard as the latest in a series of provocations by President Saakashvili.

Moscow recalled its Ambassador to Tbilisi and evacuated scores of diplomats and their families in an emergency airlift on Friday.

Russia has blocked the issue of any new visas for Georgians and advised Russian citizens not to travel to the former Soviet state. Mr Saakashvili has accused the Kremlin of hysteria, saying that there was no threat to the security of Russians in Georgia.

Sergei Ivanov, the Russian Defence Minister, has accused Georgia of using the crisis to create a pretext for regaining control by force of two breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which are patrolled by Russian peacekeeping troops. Many of the people in both regions have Russian passports.

Mr Ivanov has also compared the events in Georgia to the Stalinist terror campaigns, saying that they reminded him of 1937, the year in which thousands of people were sent to the labour camps.

The dispute has plunged relations between Georgia and Russia to their worst level since Mr Saakashvili was swept to power in the Rose Revolution of November 2003.

He has clashed repeatedly with Moscow since then in his pursuit of pro-Western policies, including membership of Nato. that are intended to pull Georgia out of the Russian orbit.

Mr Saakashvili has accused Russia of trying to overthrow his regime and of supporting the separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. World leaders have urged both sides to exercise restraint. Russia has appealed to the UN Security Council to condemn Georgia, but the United States and Britain have objected to the wording of its resolution.

Georgia is vulnerable to economic pressure because it depends on Moscow for gas supplies. Russia’s electricity monopoly controls much of the power grid.

Gela Bezhuashvili, the Georgian Foreign Minister, said that Moscow was attempting to exert pressure to secure the transfer of money from Georgians working in Russia.

An estimated one million Georgians in Russia send £1 billion a year to relatives at home, helping to keep its impoverished economy afloat.

The Russian military has responded to the crisis by halting moves to withdraw troops from its Soviet-era army bases in Georgia, which are due to close in 2008.

An insult from history

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