Ed Morrissey describes it as ethnic cleansing, which is probably a good description. On Vladimir Putin’s orders, the Russian military drove Georgians out of the undisputed Georgian city of Gori. If they didn’t leave, they were to be killed.

“The soldiers told us they had an order from Putin – leave or be killed.” Manana Dioshvili showed no emotion as she described how Russian troops forced her to flee her home. Her former neighbours nodded in agreement, huddled together in a kindergarten whose windows had been blown out by a Russian bomb.

“That’s how they explained themselves to us,” she recalled of the moment they fled the ethnic Georgian village of Kurta, near the capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali.

“They said, ‘Putin has given us an order that everyone must be either shot or forced to leave’. They told us we should ask the Americans for help now because they would kill us if we stayed.”

Vardo Babutidze, 79, was not lucky enough to be visited by Russian soldiers. Her husband Georgi, 85, was shot twice through the chest by an Ossetian paramilitary who came to their house to demand weapons.

You often have to be skeptical of false claims of war crimes during conflict, but this is hardly the case here. Residents all around the city have consistently given the same exact account to Tony Halpin of TimesOnline. So it would seem that Russia committed war crimes, killing unarmed civilians for not complying with orders to leave their own town for some unknown reason.

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