To much was made of the few Russian planes that Georgia manged to down. From McClatchy Newspapers…..

At first, news of Russia’s aerial attacks came in fragments. An airfield was hit, a radar station demolished. But by Monday, as bombs fell among the withdrawing Georgian forces, it was only too clear what the Russians had been up to.

The early strikes had made it impossible for Georgians, who in the war’s first day had shot down four Russian aircraft, to mount an effective response. Now Russian jets could dominate the skies.

Col. Gen. Anatoly Nagovitsin, the deputy head of the Russian military’s general staff, put it bluntly: “I can report on Russian supremacy in the airspace. Georgian aircraft stopped flying.”

Outside Tskhinvali, Georgian soldiers huddled beneath trees and bridges, trying to stay out of the line of sight of passing Russian jets. In addition to military trucks, troops were being moved around in civilian buses and vans. In Gori, soldiers worked out of a university building.

They had to hide; there was no answer to the Su-25 fighter jets, TU-22 bombers and others streaking nearby, looking for prey.

If you read the full article, you will get a lot of direct quotes from Georgian soldiers.