Georgian officials countered that the soldier had asked for asylum due to "unbearable conditions" in the Russian army and even took him to the central Tbilisi branch of fast food chain McDonalds.

"An initial investigation has shown Alexander Glukhov was captured by Georgian armed forces in the Akhalgori region of South Ossetia and taken to Tbilisi," a Russian defence ministry spokesman was quoted as saying by the RIA-Novosti and Interfax news agencies.

He said Glukhov was a conscript performing his compulsory military service.

The Georgian interior ministry said in a statement in Tbilisi that the soldier had surrendered to Georgian police and requested Georgian citizenship because of "unbearable conditions" in the Russian military.

Interior ministry spokesman Zurab Gvenetadze told AFP Glukhov was seeking to stay in Georgia.

"The soldier said he was serving in unbearable conditions in Akhalgori, with poor food supply and not even minimal sanitary conditions. The soldier wants to stay in Georgia and to ask the president to grant him Georgian citizenship," Gvenetadze said.

An AFP correspondent later found Glukhov tucking into supper in a branch of McDonalds on Tbilisi's main avenue, accompanied by minders from the Georgian interior ministry.

Glukhov told several media correspondents who had been tipped off over his presence in the restaurant that he had neither been captured or mistreated.

"Nobody took me," said Glukhov, adding he was unaware of the reports from Moscow that he had been captured. "I want to go back to Russia but not to the army."

He gave his age as 21 and said he was from the region of Udmurtia, around 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) east of Moscow. He said he had a bad relationship with his commander in the Russian army.

Georgian television channels earlier showed a video of the soldier appearing tired and disoriented.

He said that he had been serving in Akhalgori since December 1 and that "conditions are very bad. There are no baths. It was bad with food. They fed us little.

"That's why I am asking the president of Georgia to let me stay in Tbilisi," he said.

The Russian military spokesman, Alexander Drobyshevsky, responded angrily to the video: "This was a media provocation obtained under physical and moral pressure under which anything possible can be obtained."

The Akhalgori district was seized by Russian forces during the brief war in August over the rebel South Ossetia region.

While it lies within South Ossetia's Soviet-era borders, Akhalgori was under Tbilisi's control after the region broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s.

Russia sent troops deep into Georgia in early August to repel a Georgian military attempt to retake South Ossetia, which had received extensive backing from Moscow for years.

Russian forces later withdrew to within South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another rebel region, under an EU-brokered ceasefire after Moscow recognised the two regions as independent. A 225-member EU mission is monitoring the ceasefire.

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