This week, naturally enough, the tabloids concentrated on the conflict in South Ossetia. And Tvoi Den stood out with its punchy headlines, scatological humor and extreme patriotic fervor. On Saturday, it printed grim-faced portraits of Medvedev and Putin with a simple headline, "Men!" which probably works better in Russian. The paper's point was that the leaders are real men, who are defending their citizens. It also introduced the contrasting theme of Mikheil Saakashvili's cowardice. A charming cartoon showed Saakashvili shitting his pants after meeting the Russian bear and being told to clean himself up by President George Bush.

On Monday, the paper continued the cowardice theme with a story saying Saakashvili had tried to shoot himself and was stopped by one of his guards, who grabbed the gun. The story cited "Tvoi Den's information" as its source and didn't give any more details. It also included a quote from an unnamed doctor saying Saakashvili takes strong psychotropic drugs and "has the eyes of a madman." Then there was a quote from an unnamed woman, described as his former lover, who said he enjoyed scratching her when they had sex, and so he must be a coward.

Just to round things off, Tvoi Den printed a comment from a criminal psychologist, Mikhail Vinogradov, who said Saakashvili was a sociopath with endocrinological problems that led to "brain damage on an organic level."

Tvoi Den's approach was similar to that of Channel One, which on Tuesday had a news item where a bearded "expert" discussed Saakashvili's psychological flaws and revived the science of phrenology to discuss what the shape of his forehead said about his character. The channel even spliced together footage of Saakashvili and Adolf Hitler, purportedly to make a point about the Georgian leader's body language.

On Tuesday, Tvoi Den played with Saakashvili's surname in a one-word headline that could be translated as "Shit Himselfvili." The story said he tried to run away at the sound of a bullet and had to be knocked to the ground by his bodyguards. The inside pages included a cartoon of Saakashvili dreaming of a crown while shadowy hands held a stripy hat -- such as are worn by Russian prisoners -- over his head.

The paper has also asked Georgian-born celebrities to give their opinions. The usually outrageous showbiz pundit Otar Kushanashvili told Tvoi Den on Saturday that he saw both Ossetia and Georgia as his homeland and that he was "very ashamed for my Georgia." Keti Topuria of pop group A-Studio said she was very worried and "no one wants war," while the pop singer Diana Gurtskaya, who represented Georgia at the Eurovision Song Contest this year, was photographed praying for peace in a church.

Glamorous television host Tina Kandelaki wrote in a much-quoted blog entry that she met Saakashvili a few years ago and disliked him. "I'm not a psychiatrist who can give a diagnosis," she wrote, going on to give what sounded very much like a diagnosis. "Hypertrophied love of fame multiplied by hypertrophied vanity and a very unstable nervous system, to put it mildly, are not the best advisers for a president."

Star Hit magazine, whose editor is Channel One host Andrei Malakhov, ran a big feature on the opinions of Georgians living in Russia. Kushanashvili cropped up again. "My family is still there. It's scary," he told the magazine. Here he was quoted at greater length than in Tvoi Den, and his views sounded rather different, too. "You shouldn't say that Georgians have aggressive intentions," he said, describing the source of the conflict as "a problem within the family."