GORI, GEORGIA - Levan Kakashvili has been sleeping under a tree. What used to be his house is now a mound of broken bricks behind a five-story apartment building blackened by Russian bombing raids.
He blames the Russians for his plight, but he blames his own leader, U.S.-backed Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, for giving the Kremlin an excuse to pummel the tiny former Soviet republic in the widening, four-day-old conflict that began over control of the breakaway province of South Ossetia.
"I'm very angry with him," said Kakashvili as he slapped water from an outdoor spigot on his face and wiped the dust off his shoes. "He knew that if he hit Tskhinvali [the South Ossetian capital], the Russians would hit Georgia. Now they are bombing us into oblivion."
Hours before reports that this city had fallen to Russian forces Monday, Georgians in Gori were stuffing into their cars whatever belongings they could salvage from the rubble of their apartments -- winter coats, kitchen utensils, bath towels -- and leaving.
And as they evacuated, they said they have lost confidence in their 40-year-old president, who only five years ago embraced President Bush and put his country on the path of democratic reform and an alliance with the West.
Where is the West?
Many said they were equally disheartened by the lack of intervention from the United States and Europe Union to bring an end to the hostilities.
Avtandil Sisuashvili, 72, was among them. "We need to know whether we are still under Moscow's rule or whether we are protected by the West," said Sisuashvili, standing inside his apartment, strewn with broken glass shattered by the bombing's shock waves. "We're not sure anymore whether the West defends us. Russia feels like it can do whatever it wants. We don't feel safe anymore."
