Gayuz is in his early 20s, has a bandaged arm and sits atop an old looted Lada. He tells me he was there, in the fighting. His gear is filthy, muddied combat trousers and an ill-fitting standard camouflage jacket, and his breath heavy with drink. "They bombed Tskhinvali and we gave it to them," he insists. "Blood for blood."

"What were you fighting for?"

Gayuz sways a little, slips off the front of the Lada and points to the poster displayed in front of the bombed-out government buildings. Ossetian and Russian tricolours merge into one. "Recognise the union with Russia," the poster declares. He asks me for a lighter, lights his cigarette and then ostentatiously decides to keep it.

As you wander down Stalin Street, the damage becomes more extensive and the poverty deepens. Tskhinvali is not so much a town as a large village, with a strip of provincial Soviet administrative buildings. Stuck in a mid 20th-century time-warp, the isolated "capital" of South Ossetia had stopped developing long ago, when the rot set in for what was then the USSR. By the edge of town, you find a few streets of shacks and hovels that have been the worst hit. The corrugated iron sheets that were makeshift roofs have been blown off into piles of debris. This is what indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets looks like: a few streets simply aren't there any more. A middle-aged woman notices me inspecting her damaged home and comes out to make me leave. She speaks no Russian. Her 12-year-old son darts out and takes over.

"It's OK if you're a journalist .?.?. Mummy is frightened .?.?. She's Georgian by birth. We used to all live together here .?.?. before I was born. She doesn't want to talk." Are other Georgians still in Tskhinvali? The little boy replies: "There were." Then he slams the door.