“The Ossetians want you to know that if you come any closer they'll shoot you,” said a Russian soldier, leaning out from a Jeep in the strip of no man's land that divides Georgia from its breakaway region of South Ossetia.

A hundred metres ahead, Ossetian troops stood behind a heavily fortified checkpoint.

A hundred metres behind, Georgian soldiers and police eyed them suspiciously through binoculars from a temporary border post in the village of Ergneti.

This is the tense new front line between Georgia and separatist rebels a day after Russia withdrew its troops from a self-declared buffer zone set up around South Ossetia after the five-day war in August.

The Jeep drove off, leaving The Times to ponder the next step. A decision to press ahead prompted frantic waving from the Ossetians, but no shots, before an officer came forward and demanded identification.

The border checkpoint — at a burnt-out petrol station a few miles from Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital — may soon become a flashpoint.

It was held by Georgia before the war and a ceasefire agreement brokered by President Sarkozy requires all sides to return to their pre-conflict positions by today.

“We expect the Ossetian militias to leave shortly so that we can restore the old border,” said Alexander Lomaia, Secretary of Georgia's National Security Council, who had arrived with bodyguards to inspect the scene at Ergneti.

The Ossetians have other ideas. One soldier, Ilich, said: “This is the territory of the Republic of South Ossetia and we're not going anywhere. Nobody here is planning to leave this place.”

Refused permission to travel on to Tskhinvali, The Times made the short walk back to the Georgian line, where Zhuro Cheriadze and his neighbour, Iza Peruashvili, were waiting for a chance to go home.

The pair may be the unluckiest of the Georgian refugees now returning to the villages inside the former buffer zone. Their houses stand in the strip of no man's land and it is still too dangerous to reclaim them.

“My house is 60 metres over there, on the right, and Iza lives opposite. We haven't seen our homes for two months because we left as soon as the fighting started. But I am sure the Russians and Ossetians have stolen everything,” said Mr Cheriadze, 51.

Referring to the 1992 conflict when South Ossetia first broke away from Georgia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he said: “I lived in Tskhinvali when the first war started, so I came here and built that house. Now I've lost everything for the second time.”

Scores of looted and destroyed houses along the route from the city of Gori are testament to the plight of many other Georgian villagers now similarly destitute. In Tkviavi, at the heart of the conflict zone, an entire neighbourhood of 20 houses has been destroyed, with roofs blasted off, windows blown out and walls ruptured.

“Russian jets dropped four bombs here,” said Temo Kareli, 74, pointing to a hole in the roof of his house. Residents showed Mr Lomaia a crater where, they said, an unexploded bomb was still buried in the mud.

Beside it, Dhuzhuna Merabashvili stood trembling in the shattered remains of her house. A chaise longue and two narrow beds filled its single habitable room, while a faded statue of Santa Claus stood in the corner as the only reminder of happier times.

“The roof is broken and we have no shelter from the rain. My husband is sick in hospital already and I don't know how we will survive the winter like this,” she said. Nicholas Rurua, a senior member of the Georgian parliament, sought to reassure her that government aid would pay for repairs.

The Kremlin says that it holds 200 EU monitors responsible for security in the buffer zone now that Russian forces have ended their occupation of Georgia. A team of French EU monitors arrived in Ergneti soon after Mr Lomaia's party left.

They conferred with Georgian police about the position of South Ossetian forces beyond the temporary border area, but made no attempt to enter the no man's land. One officer said: “We are just here to observe and monitor the situation. I was in Bosnia ten years ago and this is similar.”

It remains unclear if EU monitors will be allowed into South Ossetia and the other breakaway region of Abkhazia. Russia has recognised them as independent states, stationed 3,800 troops in each and insisted that the EU has no mandate in the two regions.

Another potential flashpoint is approaching. Russian troops continued to occupy the Akhalgori district yesterday, a corner of South Ossetia held previously by Georgia. Their presence prompted the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe to declare Russia's withdrawal incomplete. Mr Lomaia said that Moscow would be violating the agreement if the soldiers did not leave today.

“There are no signs of withdrawal there now. Until they have left Akhalgori, we will not consider the October 10 deadline to have been met,” he said.

Georgian police refused to allow The Times to pass a checkpoint outside Akhalgori and to approach the Russian troops. One officer said: “The Russians don't want to see anybody. I don't think they are going anywhere.”

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