Staunton, August 21 – Photographer Aleksandr Belensky has documented what many observers feared: despite spending more than 50 billion US dollars on the Sochi Olympics, Vladimir Putin has left Sochi not the vital place he promised but a ghost town where there are almost no tourists and where much of the infrastructure is already decaying. […]
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, along with several other performers, activists and journalists, have been attacked by Cossack paramilitary police while attempting a protest performance in Sochi this afternoon (RT has removed their video so we have replaced it with video from the Associated Press). The group attempted once again, having been detained yesterday, to […]
On January 31, 2014, Alexei Navalny published a petition to Russian authorities he had made asking for permission to travel to Sochi to conduct research for his website and his blog. He described the extensive evidence of corruption he had found in Olympic construction projects (in a project translated by The Interpreter) and asked for permission […]
Speaking at a meeting with participants of the public council to prepare for the Sochi Olympics earlier in the week, President Vladimir Putin called “the Circassian factor” an “atavism of the theory of deterrence,” and an “instrument of the cold war.” “Back during the ‘cold war,’ the ‘deterrence theory’ was born, aimed at deterring the […]
This is the second part of an article published by Lenta.Ru on how foreign journalists perceived the Olympics opening ceremonies (read the first part here). The criticism of the Lenta piece is that some readers believe that many of the quotes from the Western authors have been cherry picked, segments critical of Putin and the […]
The problems at the Sochi Olympics are well known, and both the international community and the Russian opposition has been quick to point them out. But for many Russians, even those upset with Putin and Sochi’s corruption, the Olympics also represent a sad lost opportunity. What should be a great event and a sign of […]
This article, published by the independent Russian news outlet Lenta, attempts to summarize the viewpoints of foreign journalists who wrote about the 2014 Winter Olympic Games opening ceremonies in Sochi. Some readers, including some of the writers quoted within the article, complained that their criticisms of Russia and the opening ceremony were softened and the […]
Due to the high price of the construction at Sochi, some investors are worried that they will not be able to recoup their costs. In order to avoid default, some have advocated for the construction of casinos and the creation of a “gambling zone.” However, President Putin is against the idea. — Ed. Russian President […]
With the Twitter hashtag “#SochiProblems” trending worldwide, the Russian President is expressing concerns about the state of non-Olympic facilities, facilities that were supposed to ensure that the infrastructure built for the Olympics is properly utilized afterwards. — Ed. Russian President Vladimir Putin is concerned about construction in Sochi that is not related to the Olympic […]
Pravda, the official paper of the Communist Party, says that the coverage of Sochi has been unfair to Russia, as Western journalists mirror the biases of their countries against the Russian state, the Russian people, and the Russian leader. – Ed. Perhaps never before in history news about the upcoming Olympics had less to do […]
