Fanning anti-Georgian sentiment, pro-Kremlin youth groups rallied Tuesday to demand that Georgia's president be tried as a war criminal, and ultranationalists volunteered to track down Georgians living here illegally.

The Nashi and Young Russia youth groups staged a picket near the Georgian Embassy in central Moscow to urge the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution calling for President Mikheil Saakashvili to be tried on charges of war crimes and "the genocide of the Ossetian people."

Dozens of protesters waved their groups' flags in front of the embassy and wore T-shirts with the words "I am an Ossetian" written inside a gun target. The rally culminated in demonstrators placing a toy tank representing the Georgian army on a map of South Ossetia and destroying it with a sledgehammer.

Meanwhile, the ultranationalist Movement Against Illegal Migration announced that it was prepared to check areas of Moscow where there are "concentrations of Georgian citizens" to determine whether they are living in Russia illegally. Group activists would then report their findings to the police, the group's leader, Alexander Belov, said in an interview published Tuesday in Kommersant. He also said the group would compile a list of addresses in Moscow where members of ethnic Georgian organized-crime groups meet.

Igor Tabakov / MT Pro-Kremlin youth wearing shirts that say "I am an Ossetian" on Tuesday.

The authorities deported hundreds of Georgian citizens in 2006, the last time when tensions flared up between Russia and Georgia, but this time the Kremlin has explicitly warned law enforcement officials not to wage another campaign against Georgian citizens.

Although avoiding increased attention from the police so far, some members of the Georgian diaspora in Russia have received anonymous threats. The administrators of several Russian-language pro-Georgian web sites have received anonymous e-mails advising them to leave Russia, Kommersant said.

The owner of one of the web sites, Nukri Basharauli, said he and several of his colleagues at the web site Abkhazeti.ru had received threatening phone calls in addition to e-mails. The web site refers to Russian troops as "fascists."