The first armoured personnel carrier nudged past the top of the hill. It paused as if getting its bearings, and then set off towards Tbilisi. Behind it, an endless column of Russian military vehicles appeared on a shimmering horizon - trucks, tankers, and a beaten-up Nissan.

The Russian army was on the move. What wasn't clear was where it was going. For the next hour the column continued its sedate progress, past yellow fields and a hazy mountain valley, from Gori towards the Georgian capital,Tbilisi.

Thirty miles from the city, it stopped. A Russian soldier hopped out of his vehicle and began directing traffic. "We've been told to stay there," he explained, pointing down a rough dirt track towards the rustic hamlet of Orjosari, just over a mile away.

The soldier said Russia didn't intend to keep going down the main highway connecting Tbilisi to Gori, and the east and west of the country. "The only reason we've come here is because of a provokazia by Mikheil Saakashvili," he said, accusing Georgia's president of wrongdoing.

In theory the conflict between Russia and Georgia is now over, as European negotiators led by France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, hammer out a peace deal. In reality, Russia's mighty war machine was trundling insouciantly through Georgia.

Several Russian trucks overshot and missed their turning. One broke down. A soldier got the wheezing vehicle going again. Where was he from? "Chechnya. We've come here to help," he said.

For the terrified residents of Gori and surrounding villages, it didn't seem like help. Yesterday morning, as the Russian tanks advanced from their base in South Ossetia they passed through Georgian controlled-villages, telling residents to hang out white flags or be shot.

Behind them, according to people fleeing those villages, came a militia army of Chechen and Ossetian volunteers who had joined up with the regular Russian army. The volunteers embarked on an orgy of looting, burning, murdering and rape, witnesses claimed, adding that the irregulars had carried off young girls and men.

"They killed my neighbour's 15-year-old son. Everyone was fleeing in panic," Larisa Lazarashvili, 45, said. "The Russian tanks arrived at our village at 11.20am. We ran away. We left everything - our cattle, our house, and our possessions."

Achiko Khitarishvili, 39, from Berbuki, added: "They were killing, burning and stealing. My village isn't in a conflict zone. It's pure Georgia."

These claims of Russian atrocities were impossible to verify. But the mood of panic was real enough - with villagers fleeing towards Tbilisi by all means possible. One family of eight piled into a tiny white Lada; others fled on tractors.

For much of the day the Russian troops in Gori were busying destroying Georgia's military infrastructure. Smoke poured from the military supply camp in the village of Uplistsikhe.

Those who fled expressed a feeling of betrayal. They said Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, had duped them. "I believed him when he said there was peace. That's why we stayed in our homes. But it isn't true," Lamzika Tushmali, 62, said. She added: "There is no ceasefire."

At the end of the Russian column, a group of volunteers arrived in a shabby mini-van flying a Russian flag. One of them had his face covered with a balaclava; all were heavily armed; their mood was exuberant. What were they doing? "We've come for a holiday," one said.

For most of the day there was no sign of the Georgian army. After five days of ferocious bombardment by Russian warplanes, it appears not to exist. With rumours swirling of an imminent Russian attack on Tbilisi, however, Georgia mustered a platoon of 50 soldiers, who took up positions 10 miles down the road from where the Russians appeared to have parked up for the night.

On Georgian radio, meanwhile, military experts were discussing the possibility of a new partisan war against the Russians - suggesting that the government's failure meant that it was time for ordinary Georgians to take the initiative.

It's an idea that may take root. "I spent two years in the Soviet army. If there is a partisan army I'll be in the first row," Koba Chkhirodze, 41, said yesterday.