EDITORIAL: Russia Bloody Russia and the 2014 Games

EDITORIAL

Russia Bloody Russia and the 2014 Games

Former Vice Premier Bashir Aushev. 
RIP Ingushetia, June 13, 2009.

Supreme Court judge Aza Gazgireyeva. 
RIP Ingushetia, June 10, 2009.

Interior Mininster Adilgerei Magomedtagirov. 
RIP Dagestan, June 5, 2009.

In just the first two weeks of June, not just one or two but three high-ranking Caucasus government officials have been brutally shot and killed.  It could not be more clear that, if he ever had it, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has lost control of the region where it proposes to hold the 2014 Olympic games, that the separatist activity that began in Chechnya has not only not been silenced, but is spreading like wildfire throughout the region, emboldened by Putin’s crazed decision to support separatism in Ossetia and Abkhazia.

A Question for Vladimir Putin

We’d like to ask Vladimir Putin:  If you can’t protect supreme court  judges and cabinet ministers in the Caucasus from lethal acts of terrorism, how in the world do you imagine you’ll be able to protect Olympic athletes in Sochi?

EDITORIAL: Stormclouds over Sochi

EDITORIAL

Stormclouds over Sochi

A few weeks ago, we reported that the Olympic organizing committee was shocked at a recent inspection of Sochi to see how little progress the Putin regime had made in constructing the basic facilities that will be necessay to host the 2014 Olympics there.  As always, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin gave assurances that everything was fine.

As always, Putin was lying.

Russia Extinguishes the Olympic Flame in Sochi

Writing in the Wall Street Journal Jane Buchanan of Human Rights Watch condemns Russia’s assault on freedom of speech and property rights in Sochi:

“We are not against the Olympics, but why should the Olympics violate our rights? Can you tell the International Olympic Committee that I am Russian, I am not against the Olympics? They are taking our property for a temporary parking lot. There is no information. No one will answer us. We wait for answers and we worry.”

– A Sochi resident facing Olympics-driven eviction from her home,

April 24, 2009

MOSCOW — A delegation of the International Olympic Committee has just visited Sochi, the Russian Black Sea resort town and future Olympic host city, to assess the status of preparations for the 2014 Winter Games. Jean-Claude Killy, the three-time Olympic skiing champion who chairs the International Olympic Committee’s coordination for the Sochi Games, spoke glowingly of the Sochi authorities’ “open and constructive” attitude. “The Russian diamond is shining more and more with each passing day,” Mr. Killy gushed.

Many Sochi residents would disagree.

{Click the link to read the rest, showing how the Russian government is violating the very principles of the Olympic movement as it builds the Sochi site for the 2014 games in total disregard of the civil rights of the local residents}

Kasparov on the Sochi Charade

Garry Kasparov, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

It has become fashionable to speak of change and liberalization in Russia under President Dmitry Medvedev. May 7 marked his one-year anniversary in office. He has recently granted an interview with an opposition newspaper, allowed a few human-rights activists to criticize Russia’s regime, and even started a blog. There is also a new administration in Washington that wants a fresh start with foreign powers.

However, Mr. Medvedev’s gestures have not been matched by policy. It is more appropriate to think of Russia as living under Vladimir Putin’s ninth year in power. Mr. Putin is now prime minister but still in charge. His agenda of oppression and plunder is still the course in Russia. The Kremlin’s willingness to install its candidates in office and persecute its opponents remains undiminished.

Last month, the Putin government inserted itself into the mayoral election in Sochi, a resort town on the Black Sea that has been selected to host the 2014 Winter Olympics.

{Click the link to read the rest of Kasparov’s condemnation of the IOC’s decision to vest Sochi with the games}

EDITORIAL: Putin’s Sochi Charade

EDITORIAL

Putin’s Sochi Charade

With the Russian economy in freefall, it’s looking more and more every day like Russia’s effort to host the 2014 Olympics will bankrupt the nation, leading either to total Russian humiliation before the world or to draconian, Soviet-like privation and suffering for the sake of a Potemkin sham.

EDITORIAL: The Kremlin’s Sochi Lies Risk Lives

EDITORIAL

The Kremlin’s Sochi Lies Risk Lives

Here’s what Dmitry Chernyshenko, head of security for the Sochi Olympics in 2014, told Reuters last week:  “Sochi is the summer residence of our president and prime minister, that says everything.  This is one of the safest and most secure places in Russia and it’s the state with the highest security level.”

It was one of the most sensational and outrageous lies yet told by the malignant regime of Vladimir Putin, placing the lives of tens of thousands of people around the world in jeopardy and showing the absolute contempt with which Putin views basic values of honesty and integrity.

Sochi “Votes”

 In a development which can surprise nobody, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov has gone down to crushing defeat in the Sochi mayoral election; his opponent, supported by Vladimir Putin, won three quarters of the vote while Nemtsov took just over a tenth.  Though billed as a pulse-pounding exercise in pluralism, 60% of Sochi residents chose to stay at home on election day.   Despite massive controversy over corruption and abuse of power in preparing for the 2014 Olympics, the Kremlin’s candidate won 77% of the vote and the vast majorit of the candidates were struck from the ballot long before election day.  This is “democracy” as Putin’s KGB understands it.

 

Once again, Putin’s Russia has made an utter mockery of the very concept of the election, showing that Russia is a barbaric state on a par with the banana republics of Africa.  The always brilliant Robert Coalson has detailed the naked fraud by which Nemtsov was victimized throughout the campaign:

 

The mayoral election in Sochi – which President Dmitry Medvedev has hailed as a sign of healthy democracy in Russia – is coming down to the wire, with official voting scheduled for April 26 (although local officials already have the tried-and-true “early voting” scam working at full speed).

 

People interested in following this important election could do a lot worse than reading the blog of Ilya Yashin, a Yabloko youth activist who is running former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov’s campaign. Yashin’s blog is a fascinating catalogue of dirty tricks and illegal tactics used against Nemtsov. Among other things, the blog documents with photos and video how state-sector workers and soldiers are being bused in by the regional administration to vote early (and often?). 

EDITORIAL: Bombing Sochi

EDITORIAL

Bombing Sochi

On August 7, 2008, a bomb exploded on a public beach in Sochi, Russia, proposed home of the 2014 Olympic Games.  Two people were killed, eight injured.  Later that month, the Russian government claimed to have intercepted another bombing before it occurred.

It wasn’t the first month that year for deadly terrorist bombings in Sochi.  In June, a bomb had exploded in the city’s Lazarev district killing one civilian, and the event was trumpted by Kavkaz Center, the voice of the Chechen rebels.  A bomb had been placed in the same district a month earlier, and taken both the arms off of the policeman who tried to disarm it.  Later that same month, yet another bomb went off — this time in Sochi’s Adler district, killing one.

The terrorists were not satisfied with their tally of four lives in 2008; the bombings have continued apace this year, bringing the total number of fatalities to six, with nearly 50 others injured.  Last week police in Sochi arrested two men believed to have been associated with at least six of the killings and 19 of the injuries. The identity of the two was as shocking as their venal deeds — they were not angry Chechen infiltrators, but rather a local policeman and a TV cameraman.

It’s hard to think of a more emphatic warning of what could happen when the world’s elite athletes gather for the 2014 games than this string of savage terror attacks.  Russia’s list of furious enemies is long and deep, and runs from Estonia to Chechnya and Dagestan to Georgia.  All of them will be appalled to see Russia parading itself before the world as if it were a bastion of democracy, and any one of them could produce extremist elements capable of lashing out at any time.

And it’s hard not to feel nauseous at the way the world’s media have neglected this story and their paramount obligation to give people basic information they need to keep their children safe.

EDITORIAL: Scandal in Sochi

EDITORIAL

Scandal in Sochi

Alexander Lebedev

Last week, the Kremlin disqualified the outspoken billionaire Alexander Lebedev from appearing on the April 26 ballot for mayor of the southern Russian city of Sochi, where the 2014 winter olympics are scheduled to be held.

Lebedev, whose name means “swan,”  is easily the most enigmatic living Russian.  A former KGB agent just like Vladimir Putin (he worked in the UK while Putin was in Germany), he somehow found the capital to create a bank holding company which purchased a tiny struggling bank called National Reserve in 1995.  Within three years that bank had grown to become one of the ten largest in Russia, and it was one of only two of those top ten to survive the 1998 financial collapse that brought Putin to power.  Today, Lebedev (who is close friends with former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev) not ony owns part of the Russia’s most strident opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, but also owns the major British paper The Evening Standard.  He also owns big chunks of Aeroflot, Gazprom and Sberbank.  Forbes says he’s worth $3 billion and the 385th-richest man on the planet.

Another Original LR Translation: The Sochi Farce

Translator’s Note: On Wednesday LR carried a fairly negative report from Der Spiegel about the forthcoming Olympic fiasco. However, it was bouncy upbeat European in comparison to what I had just been reading in Novaya Gazeta. See below.

Oligarchs Aren’t “Go”

Yevgeni Titov

Novaya Gazeta

25 February 2009

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

Is the state going to have to rescue Potanin and Deripaska’s businesses in order for the Sochi Olympics to happen?

Construction costs for the Sochi sports venues have gone down by 15%, declared deputy-premier for the Olympics Dmitri Kozak at a meeting with prime minister Vladimir Putin. According to the deputy minister, an expert review of the project documentation was able to find ways to make the saving. However, given that food, transport, and utility prices are rising, making the Olympics cheaper seems a rather doubtful proposition. Especially if one takes into account that construction of the venues has not started and building workers are not getting paid. One gets the impression that Olympic optimism is directly but inversely proportional to the depth of the economic crisis. Especially at the venues that Russia’s former Forbes-list billionaires and business giants are responsible for. Novaya Gazeta’s correspondent visited Sochi to see for himself how preparations for the Olympics were going. No venues were to be seen and he was left only with questions.

Russia’s Olympian Fiasco

“The most helpful thing would be a new, long war with Georgia. That sounds bad, but it’s still better than Olympic Games in Sochi.”

– Svetlana Berestyeneva, Sochi resident, to Der Spiegel

Der Spiegel reports:

At 10 a.m. in the Caucasus Mountains, backhoes dig their way through the snow and trucks dump loads of sand. The sun is a yellowy white and it’s -4 degrees Celsius (25 degrees Fahrenheit). Russian men with cigarettes dangling from the corners of their mouths reach for their helmets, shovels and wheelbarrows, then they begin to hammer, weld and saw.

There are 500 people working here at an elevation of 563 meters (1,847 feet) at the foot of the Aibga mountain range. Two helicopters, a white Ka-27 and a red Mi-8, rise into the air overhead. One flying hour per helicopter costs €3,800 ($4,830), and each can carry four tons of cargo. Right now they’re flying cement bags and steel pylons up to the north slope of Black Pyramid mountain, where all alpine ski events will be held during the Olympic Games in February, 2014.

A Postcard from Sochi, Home of the 2014 Olympic Games

Despite all the development, Sochi still feels like a kaleidoscopic version of Coney Island, all juiced up on lukewarm vodka and sunburned potbellies, and that can either be part of its charm or the one thing that keeps it from being a truly relaxing place to spend a few days.  The Mediterranean-style glamour that Mr. Markozov mentioned, at least for now, can be frustratingly elusive, sprinkled around at places like Platforma and Sinee More, or the Blue Sea [LR: Actually, it means "dark blue sea"], a restaurant with white tablecloths and a sleek wooden deck that looks out onto the water. With its poor roads and gruff service, Sochi can often seem less like the heart of the new Russian Riviera, and more like the Soviet package-tour destination it once was.

EDITORIAL: The Sochi Fiasco

EDITORIAL

The Sochi Fiasco

Our sidebar carries a banner inviting readers to sign a petition to divest Russia of the 2014 Olympic games, which it proposes to hold in Sochi.  Even before the Georgia invasion, the reasons for doing so were obvious:  There is horrific danger posed to the athletes, both from terrorism in the region and from the everyday risks of Russian society (Russia is among the most dangerous places in the world in terms of murder, fire fatality and airline fatalities). There is the tacit recognition of the KGB regime of Vladimir Putin, which has brutally repressed every aspect of civil society. And there is the abhorrent misallocation of resources in a country where the average male doesn’t live to see his sixtieth year.  Add Russia’s barbaric behavior in Georgia, condemned by the entire civilized world, and the question of whether Russia should be rewarded by being allowed to host the games is a absolute no-brainer.

But in truth, just as was the case in the Cold War, it really isn’t that necessary to take action against Russia — since in all probability Russians will simply destroy themselves if left to their own devices.  Events last week made this particularly plain.

Special Extra — Say “NO!” to Sochi 2014

Russia does not deserve to be an Olympic host!

Help shut down the Sochi 2014 Olympics. Click here to learn how you can help.

The Sochi Olympics: A Disaster in the Making

The New York Times reports that, as we predicted long ago, the trouble is already starting in Sochi. Who knows how many athletes and spectators will perish if the world is actually crazed enough to hold the 2014 Olympiad there, a stone’s throw from Chechnya and Georgia, which could soon become the New Chechnya.

Two people were killed and three others injured by an explosion on a beach in Sochi on Thursday, Russia’s popular Black Sea resort which will host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, local police said.

“At 10:10 a.m. (2:10 a.m. EDT) an unidentified explosive device went off at Loo beach,” a Sochi police spokeswoman said by telephone. “The blast went off around three meters from the water. Russia’s internal security agency, the FSB and local prosecutors are both trying to determine the cause of the blast,” she said “The beach is more popular around noon, so there would have been more people injured if it had occurred later,” she added.

Sochi is one of the most fashionable Russian resorts especially favored by the elite and Russian presidents use Sochi as their vacation site.

Russian news agencies quoted the Kremlin spokeswoman as saying President Dmitry Medvedev phoned his envoy in South Russia, Vladimir Ustinov, and told him to take personal charge of the investigation. The government has allocated over $10 billion dollars to reconstruct the aging resort ahead of the 2014 Olympic Games, attracting both business and criminal groups. So far police have said who might be behind the blast Interfax quoted witnesses who said they had seen a young man and a woman approach the package, which exploded when the woman picked it up.

Sochi is also situated just miles from the border with Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia, where looming tensions between Moscow-backed separatists and Tbilisi have fuelled fears of a possible new war.

Kasparov on the Olympics

Garry Kasparov, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

The international community is justly concerned about China’s crackdown in Tibet in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. But perhaps some attention could be spared for the suffering of Russians ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics, scheduled to take place in the Russian town of Sochi.

An International Olympic Committee official visited Sochi last week and remarked: “Here you start from nothing.” Jean-Claude Killy went on to say that the complete lack of infrastructure only meant it was “an incredible chance” to build a resort.

The original estimate for the Sochi Games was $12 billion, more than was spent on the last three Winter Olympics combined. Now the organizers are saying $20 billion, and it’s only 2008. This is only the beginning of yet another massive shift of Russian assets from public to private hands – this time under the cover of the Olympic rings.

Three weeks ago, I and other Russian opposition members held a press conference with residents of Sochi. We read aloud from a new law pertaining to the Olympic site. It gives the state the ability to confiscate as much land as it wants in the area, with no possible appeal. With one decision, people will lose their homes and businesses and will have no avenue of protest.

The government announced that it will soon begin to appropriate land, and that the current owners will get a “fair-market price,” which of course will be set by the government. During the IOC’s visit, a group of local protesters tried to unfurl an “SOS” banner and were physically attacked by the police.

President George W. Bush recently visited Vladimir Putin in Sochi and did not object to the Kremlin’s assault on private ownership. Perhaps this is the same “quiet diplomacy” advocated by U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley a few weeks ago, when he was asked about the Chinese crackdown in Tibet. In other words, we are not going to hear this U.S. president say “I am a Tibetan” any time soon.

I have had a painfully close-up view of over seven years of Western quiet diplomacy toward Russia. “Quiet diplomacy” can be roughly translated as, “we’ll cut a deal no matter what.” During this period we have moved from a frail new democracy to a KGB dictatorship. Based on such results, it is long past time to try something noisier.

Despite their bluster over missile defense, Kosovo and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, there are only two things that Mr. Putin and his gang really care about: total control inside of Russia and legitimacy outside of Russia.

Legitimacy in Western eyes is clearly important to Mr. Putin. Otherwise, why not simply change the constitution, or ignore it entirely, and remain as president for a third term? Why did he even bother with the rigged elections?

The answer: the hundreds of billions of dollars flowing out of Russia in the hands of Mr. Putin’s oligarchs need a safe home. London’s capital markets, Swiss banks, real estate, energy companies across Europe – this is where much of the Russian treasury has been going for the past eight years. In order to maintain such a cozy arrangement of mutual enrichment with the West, Russia must maintain a democratic façade.

I used to compare our vanishing democracy to that of countries like Venezuela and Zimbabwe. But events have shown how wrong I was to make such comparisons – and how unfair I was being to Hugo Chávez and Robert Mugabe. Venezuela’s Mr. Chávez, little more than an oil-empowered hooligan, actually lost a recent referendum on expanding his powers by 2%. Vladimir Churov of the Russian Central Election Committee would never have stood for such an embarrassment!

Even Mr. Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s old-fashioned despot, is too shy to publish victorious results in the latest elections. Perhaps Mr. Churov can be rented out to other would-be dictators who wish to maintain pleasant relations with the champions of democracy in America and the European Union.

After Mr. Putin’s handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, “won” the Russian presidency last March, the leaders of the free world lined up to congratulate him on, as German chancellor Angela Merkel put it, “a smooth transition of power.” Were phone calls made to celebrate a similar transition in Cuba, when Fidel Castro handed the reins to his brother?

Legitimizing their capital in the West is the Kremlin’s top priority, and those congratulatory phone calls to Mr. Medvedev were worth countless billions of dollars. The last hurdle, transition of power, has been surmounted with barely a word of protest from the leaders of the G-7 nations. The return of Silvio Berlusconi, a self-declared European “advocate” for Mr. Putin and his gang, can only make things worse.

It doesn’t take a whole lot of courage to criticize the rule of Fidel Castro or Kim Jong Il. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown sounded quite tough criticizing Zimbabwe’s elections. But when it comes to nations like Russia and China, issues of basic human rights suddenly become “complicated.”

I am all for refusing to bless the Chinese show. But at the same time, it’s not fair to suddenly drag the world’s greatest athletes into a battle that politicians should have had the courage to fight. Will Russians have to wait until 2014 to see support for our own struggle for human rights?

Reuters reports:

Russian police clashed on Wednesday with local people opposed to the destruction of their homes under plans for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, during a tour by Olympic inspectors. A resident said police beat some people and detained several others at a local cemetery near the site for the main Olympic venues, during a traditional visit to relatives’ graves ahead of the Russian Orthodox Easter on Sunday. In a statement, police in the Black Sea resort of Sochi denied beating anyone, saying they were only trying to prevent a group of about 100 local residents from disrupting the IOC inspection. Locals in Nizhne-Imeretinskaya Bukhta have been protesting over the Olympic construction plans, which are likely to involve the demolition of some houses in the settlement, but deny they were planning to stage a protest there. “We were at the cemetery. Our village was surrounded by police. There were 200 of them. They did not let anyone in or out. They came to the cemetery and beat people up,” local resident Andrei Korutun told Reuters by telephone. One local official “grabbed my wife, who is pregnant, by the stomach and threw her to the ground,” he said. Police parked buses to conceal the cemetery from the visiting IOC officials, who were about 800 metres (yards) away at the time of the clashes, Korutun said. “We shouted out to them for help, we are sure they would have heard,” he added. Sochi police said in a statement that reports “in some media about a supposed fight between Sochi police officers and Sochi residents, about people being beaten, are not true.” Steps had been taken to ensure public order in line with normal practice in Russia and other countries, it added. Russian Olympic officials say very few homes will be demolished to make way for games venues, and that owners will be properly compensated.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of the Sochi Scam

We’ve previously reported on how Russia’s attempt to create an Olympic venue in Sochi is rapidly coming unglued in a predictable Russian manner. Now, the Moscow Times reports that the IOC is finally getting the message as well.

The Sochi 2014 Olympics will be among the most challenging to prepare for, a key International Olympic Committee official warned Tuesday, just a few days after the country’s Olympic construction chief stepped down amid worries that costs were ballooning out of control. “It’s a special situation and we will have to do a lot,” Jean-Claude Killy, chairman of the IOC’s coordination committee for the games, said during a meeting with Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov and other government officials responsible for the Olympic preparations. Killy, a French Alpine skiing legend, made his comments after touring some of the prospective construction sites in Sochi and Krasnaya Polyana, the planned main ski venue near the city, earlier Tuesday with a delegation of 13 other IOC members.

Sochi suffers from an almost complete lack of Olympic-class facilities, and their construction will largely have to start from scratch. Some 200 facilities, including roads and electricity lines, need to be built, an effort that will require at least $12 billion in investment. Semyon Vainshtok, the head of the Olimpstroi state corporation responsible for preparing Sochi for the games, resigned abruptly Thursday, amid accusations of mismanagement and cost overruns. Vainshtok’s departure, just seven months after being appointed to the job, came after months of criticism from lawmakers and state officials over ballooning costs as real estate prices in Sochi have soared. But Killy said Tuesday that he was impressed by the preparations so far and was “absolutely sure” that Russia and the IOC would succeed in organizing the Olympics.

In a report on the IOC visit, Channel One television’s evening newscast showed a motorcade of black sport utility vehicles raising dust as they sped along a winding road on their visit to the Krasnaya Polyana resort. Zubkov joined the IOC delegation for part of their reconnaissance mission, the channel said. Sergei Grigoryev, a spokesman for the Olimpstroi corporation, said IOC commission members were shown sites in Sochi and nearby Krasnaya Polyana, where developers plan to build an Olympic village and skiing routes. They were also shown designs for future facilities and an existing ski resort built by Gazprom, he said. The commission was also scheduled to receive a progress report on upgrading the Sochi airport, the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee said in a statement on its web site. IOC officials are to give their impressions of their visit at a news conference Wednesday.

The IOC visit is the first since Sochi was picked to host the 2014 games at an IOC meeting last July in Guatemala, where President Vladimir Putin lobbied hard for Sochi’s bid and promised that the government would invest heavily in the area’s infrastructure. The IOC delegation will visit next in 2009. When Vainshtok resigned last Thursday, government officials said the change in command had been planned in advance and would not affect the pace of preparations. But a flurry of subsequent media reports suggested that Vainshtok had quit because he realized the task was too unwieldy. “It is very difficult to make Sochi an Olympic city,” an unidentified official said, RIA-Novosti reported. “There are many infrastructure limitations — no electricity, no roads, no way to get cargoes there needed for building.”

The new chief of Olimpstroi, former Sochi mayor Viktor Kolodyazhny, said Tuesday that he wasn’t going to reshuffle his staff. “Why would I do that?” Kolodyazhny said. “It’s professionals that work there. They suit me.” The corporation has already started designing a bobsled run for the Olympics and aims to complete the work next January, he said. The bobsled route and some other planned facilities for the Olympics would run through a nature reserve, which has angered environmentalists, including Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Sunday Scandal

Last week we reported on how opposition political groups were exposing the Kremlin’s disastrous failure in organizing the Sochi Olympiad. No sooner had this story broken than the boss of the affair was forced to resign in disgrace, conclusively proving the truth of the charges. The Moscow Times reports:

Semyon Vainshtok, the head of the Olimpstroi state corporation responsible for preparing Sochi for the 2014 Olympics, resigned abruptly Thursday, amid accusations of mismanagement and cost overruns. Viktor Kolodyazhny, the mayor of Sochi, was named as Vainshtok’s replacement.

Vainshtok’s departure, just seven months after being appointed to the job, came after months of criticism from lawmakers and state officials, who said the cost of preparations for the Olympics had ballooned to nearly $12 billion. At a news briefing Thursday at Olimpstroi’s Moscow office to formalize the handover, Vainshtok introduced Kolodyazhny as his successor. In front of television cameras, Vainshtok hugged Kolodyazhny and wished him luck. Kolodyazhny spoke only briefly, saying merely, “The preparations will be finished by the deadline.”

Earlier, Regional Development Minister Dmitry Kozak told reporters that Olimpstroi would now work to complete the preparations ahead of time. Afterward, Vainshtok insisted that he had done what was expected of him, and it was time to step aside. “I had a certain task: to begin the preparations for the Olympic Games, and I have fulfilled it,” Vainshtok said in an interview on the street outside the Olimpstroi office. “I am satisfied, by now 46 billion rubles ($1.97 billion) has been transferred to the accounts of Olimpstroi.” Vainshtok, 60, added that he had had “a number of very good offers [of jobs] but nothing from the state.”

Officials sought to downplay Vainshtok’s resignation, saying he had planned it for some months. Kozak said at the briefing that he had agreed with Vainshtok in September that he would leave after completing his allotted task. “He has done as planned,” Kozak said. “I see no politics in what has happened.” He added that Vainshtok would soon be given a high-ranking state award. Both President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov on Thursday praised Vainshtok for his work at Olimpstroi.

Vainshtok, formerly head of pipeline monopoly Transneft, was tapped by Putin to head Olimpstroi on Sept. 11, a day before Putin appointed Zubkov prime minister in a shakeup of top government and state officials. After stepping down at Transneft, which he headed for eight years, Vainshtok was replaced by Putin ally Nikolai Tokarev, the head of state oil firm Zarubezhneft. Kozak on Thursday praised Kolodyazhny, 54, calling him “a highly professional manager.” He added that Kolodyazhny “was not the only candidate” to replace Vainshtok but declined to name the others. On Thursday, Vladimir Afanasenkov, a former deputy governor of the Krasnodar region, replaced Kolodyazhny as Sochi mayor. Olimpstroi vice president Sergei Grigoryev, a lieutenant of Vainshtok’s who followed him from Transneft, said Thursday that Kolodyazhny’s appointment had been “quite unexpected.” Grigoryev stoutly defended Vainshtok against his critics. “Less than a year has passed since we won the bid. It is obvious that we have neither the financial nor the strategic plan yet with exact figures and parameters,” Grigoryev said.

Grigoryev, a former vice president at Transneft under Vainshtok, hinted that the team that came with Vainshtok from the pipeline monopoly last September might also leave Olimpstroi. “But don’t expect any dramatic changes in the company,” Grigoryev said. Public arguments among officials over the spiraling costs for the Olympics have increased in recent months, with Vainshtok telling State Duma deputies last month that the games would cost taxpayers three times the initial estimates. Building the transportation infrastructure alone could cost 316 billion rubles ($13.5 billion), Vainshtok said. The government initially earmarked 200 billion rubles ($8.5 billion) of state funds for Olympic construction, including the cost of design and construction of sports facilities, energy supply, communications and tourist attractions. “A lot was missing [in the estimates] and most of what was included was not confirmed by state experts,” Vainshtok told deputies. “[The cost of] purchasing land was not even taken into account, and this alone would require an additional 82.4 billion rubles ($3.5 billion).”

The first serious hint of Vainshtok’s position being under threat came earlier this month, when Victor Ilyukhin, a Communist Duma deputy, urged authorities in an open letter to fire Vainshtok and start an investigation into possible money laundering at Olimpstroi. Ilyukhin said the state’s planned budget for Sochi, $11.9 billion, would dwarf the $6 billion combined total spent on the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Salt Lake City and Turin. Audit Chamber chief Stepashin warned a Cabinet meeting last month that the Sochi Games would end up costing taxpayers $24 billion. Ilyukhin said Thursday that the departure would offer only temporary relief. “Not much will change immediately, but all hopes are on [Kolodyazhny] to use his good local knowledge to put things right,” Ilyukhin said. In his complaint, Ilyukhin attacked Olimpstroi’s status as a state corporation, which he said meant that it was beyond the control of the Justice Ministry, State Registry, and tax and customs services. “This gives huge opportunities for money laundering,” Ilyukhin said.

Ilyukhin put the blame for quickly rising land prices in Sochi on Vainshtok’s shoulders, saying speculators had gained at the expense of the state. Chris Weafer, chief strategist at UralSib, said Vainshtok’s departure had not come as a big surprise, as “a lot of changes across the government structure” were to be expected during the presidential handover period between Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. Vainshtok’s move to Olimpstroi in September had more to do with moving him out of Transneft, where he was blocking a deal between the state and the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, than with him being involved long-term with the Olympic preparations, Weafer said.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of the Sochi Scam

Other Russia reports:

A Moscow press-conference of ecologists, human rights activists and Sochi residents has suggested that the International Olympic Committee(IOC) has grounds to cancel the winter Olympic Games, set to take place in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in 2014. The press-conference, titled “The 2014 Sochi Olympics. Opportunism, incompetence, disregard for the law – the major threat to the collapse of the National Project,” met in Moscow on April 10th.

Garry Kasparov, the leader of the United Civil Front party, noted that what is currently happening in the region does not correspond to the original plan as it was presented in Guatemala. Several planned construction sites are currently unbuildable, after geodesic surveys discovered underground problems. Panelists named the Imeretinsky Bukhta, which has an exceptionally high water table, with groundwater just two meters beneath the surface of the soil, and where “15-20 meter-long pilings drown.”

“There are things that cannot be done, even if a billion dollars is buried into them,” Kasparov said.

Another concern raised by the panelists was the unprecedented level of spending required to pull the Olympic games together, which Kasparov said is “beating all the records.” Sochi lacks much of the infrastructure of previous Olympic locations, and the original expense prediction of 6 billion dollars is shockingly low. Ivan Starikov of the People for Democracy and Justice party, commented that the current estimate for transportation infrastructure alone was now set at 7 billion dollars. Other cities beaten out by Sochi for the bid to host the games could take the IOC to court, Starikov said, as total cost was a factor in making the original decision.

One Russian Member of Parliament, Viktor Ilyukhin, told the press on April 3rd that the Sochi Olympics could cost more than the last three winter Olympic games combined.

Greenpeace, the international ecological watchdog, may also take the IOC to court. Dmitri Kaptsov, a representative of the “North Caucasus Ecological Watch,” said that Greenpeace is planning to protest the lack of environmental planning before construction, arguing that leading the Olympics in Sochi would cause a regional eco-catastrophe. To date, no expert reports on construction or ecological matters have been completed.

Sochi residents were also present at the conference to speak about the thousands of families facing eviction in the Black Sea resort. Residents complained that government officials were seizing land without providing adequate compensation or equally valued housing. Panelists also called unconstitutional a so-called “Olympic law,” which expedites the process of taking resident’s homes, and bars locals from seeking judicial protection for their property.

The press-conference reached a troubling conclusion, that Olympic planners in Sochi were using the Games as a means to attain personal wealth at the expense of local citizens and Russian taxpayers.

“It must be stated, that the present course will lead to the destruction of a unique Black Sea resort, the massive violation of Russian citizens’ civil rights, [and] the misuse of funds earmarked for the games,” a statement by participants reads. “It will damage Russia’s image, and ultimately, will put even the possibility of leading the Olympic games in Sochi into question.”

As Kaptsov explained, the IOC has the right to move the Olympics to a different city in the case that the country hosting the games does not meet its obligations. As an example, the presenters noted the 1976 Olympics, which were moved from Denver in the United States to Montreal in Canada.

The press-conference did suggests a way to ameliorate the state of affairs in Sochi. They proposed enacting a strict citizen’s control of the preparations, and suggested the possibility of moving some of the major Olympic facilities to other Russian regions that are more suited to hosting the winter Olympics. A Citizen’s Council with the obligation of overseeing the preparations in Sochi is currently in the works.

In an apparent last-minute effort to unite two world leaders for the last time, US President George W. Bush will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on April 6th. The meeting will take place in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi, scheduled to host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. In early May, Putin is expected to assume the post of Prime Minister, as his successor, Dmitri Medvedev, takes office.

Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, told press that the pair will discuss European security, including missile defense and the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty. The two countries have been locked at an impasse on US proposals to locate defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, with Russia threatening to point its nuclear warheads at Europe if the plans go through.

Bush and Putin have had a friendly personal relationship, even as rhetoric on either side of the Atlantic has escalated in tone. At their first meeting, Bush was jovial, saying: “I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul.”

Still, critics of the Kremlin have argued that Bush has failed to voice concerns at the erosion of democratic and human rights that has taken place in Russia since Putin took office. Their final meeting, framed by a resort mired in a controversial program of evicting area residents, may exemplify that point.

As the Sobkor@ru news agency reported on March 27th, some four thousand Sochi residents are under threat of forcible eviction from their homes. Authorities need to free up space for the construction of a new Olympic park. Residents claim the compensation offered for their property is minimal, and that many families will receive no compensation at all.

The first round of evictions has already begun, with the displacement of 15 refugee families from the neighboring break-away Republic of Abkhazia, The Sunday Times newspaper reported.

Some two hundred construction projects are planned for Sochi in the next seven years, including sporting facilities, railroads, highways, as well as a new airport. This makes for an expensive endeavor, with experts expecting costs to rise as high as 24 billion dollars, or double the current estimates. (By comparison, the 2006 winter Olympics in Turin, Italy cost approximately 3 billion dollars, and the 2010 games in Vancouver, Canada are estimated to cost around 4 billion dollars). As result, real estate prices in Sochi and the surrounding areas have grown by 500 percent, making them some of the highest in Russia.

The News.rin.Ru news agency spoke with Andrei Loginov, one of the residents facing eviction:

“When we found out that Sochi won the bid, we were beside ourselves with joy,” he explained. “We thought that this would bring investment to the city, and would create new jobs. Now we understand that only a small chosen group will become rich, and the ordinary people like us will be left standing by the broken washtub.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Sochi: The Russophobe Strikes!

We unfortunately have to admit that at this point, in a city of half a million people, there is no proper sewage system, electricity supply or infrastructure.

What nasty, narrow-minded Russophobe could have possibly made that statement, do you imagine, referring to the beautiful cosmopolitan city of Sochi, proposed home of the 2014 Winter Olympics?

Obviously, it can’t be true — or else how could the International Olympic Committee possibly have awarded Russia the games? But who in the world could be so crazed as to issue such a nasty smear against lovely, charming Sochi?

Why, lo and behold! Shock and dismay! It was Russian “president” Vladimir Putin himself, as reported in the Moscow Times.

Hmmm . . . wonder if Putin let the IOC have that little tidbit of information before they decided to award the games, or after . . .

Oh well, after all they are Olympic athletes. Surely they can just keep their legs crossed for two weeks whilst in country, right?

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Russian Humiliation: Neo-Soviet Russia Drops Another Sochi-Related Clanger

The Moscow Times reports on how barbaric, chicken-with-the-head-off Russia humiliated itself before the world at a recent air show it attempted to host. Reading this, do you dare to imagine dear reader what will happen when Russia attempts the Olympics, on a far grander scale?

At the opening of the MAKS 2007 air show, half a dozen bewildered delegates from Italian industrial group Finnmeccanica sheepishly boarded a barely marked shuttle bus as the temperature was rising and their patience running thin. As the driver pulled away, he veered as if to head in the opposite direction from the main event. “Please,” yelled one of the exasperated Italians, “if he’s taking us back to the entrance again, someone just shoot him.”

On Wednesday, the second day of the air show, that irritation was palpable from many foreign participants and visitors. While organizers have boasted that MAKS deserves a place in the big league of international air shows, words like “amateur” and “bizarre” were more common in assessments coming from foreigners. The most common complaints ranged from poor transport links and inadequate infrastructure to ponderous security checks, bad food and revolting public toilets.

A number of prominent officials, including Sergei Chemezov, the head of state arms exporter Rosoboronexport, have credited MAKS with climbing into the ranks of major international air shows like France’s Le Bourget and Britain’s Farnborough. This year’s event is the biggest ever, and with almost 800 companies from nearly 40 countries, foreign participation is up by almost 50 percent. The size and scope of the event have been a constant selling point for Russian officials, who have pushed it as a symbol of a resurgent aviation industry. Alexei Fyodorov, head of the newly formed, state-run United Aircraft Corporation, said last week that the country would sell $250 billion worth of military and civilian aircraft over the next 18 years.

But some representatives of foreign firms warn that the list of inconveniences faced by participants could scuttle Russian attempts to sell both itself and its aircraft to Western investors. “It is amateur,” said Nathalie Merand, a spokeswoman for Brazilian plane manufacturer Embraer, just as the backlighting at the company’s stand failed. “An air show is about business, and this is more like a public holiday. It is very expensive to be here and it is not worth it,” Merand said, listing problems from a flooded stand to a lack of overall coordination.

Another Embraer representative, who asked not to be identified, said the company was weighing whether it was interested in returning to the next MAKS event in two years. Complaining about the poor food and arbitrary document checks by police, he said he “did not know whether to throw up or urinate” in the free portable toilets. “All this is a very bizarre contrast to the claims that it is on the same level as Farnborough or Le Bourget,” said an official with another foreign firm. “They always claim that this is the best MAKS, but it might actually be the worst.”

Anna Abarshalina, head of communications for MAKS 2007, said she was aware of the complaints, but that senior event officials were unavailable for comment Wednesday afternoon. The biggest gripe was getting to the site, with some participants saying it had taken up to seven hours to travel the approximately 40 kilometers from Moscow to the Zhukovsky airfield. “They should at least have a separate entrance for the people running the exhibits,” EADS spokesman Gregor Von Kursell said. “They shouldn’t make them queue up with children and grandmothers and the toilet cleaners.”

Temperatures approaching the mid-30s didn’t help the moods of exhibitors and industry representatives as they were forced to wait in line. But with the air show an obvious target for a possible terrorist attack, most said some delays were understandable. Francois Roudier, vice president of the Le Bourget air show, described traffic and lines for security checks at the French event as a “nightmare” for organizers there as well. He said MAKS was relatively young at 15; the Le Bourget show is in its 98th year. “Crowd control can always be better,” Roudier said by telephone from Paris. “There will be solutions in years to come.”

Amanda Stainer, Farnborough International’s director of exhibitions and events, said traffic snarls were a problem that organizers of the British show had been forced to address in the past. “We got a working group together and agreed on a plan with the authorities,” Stainer said in a telephone interview. “It was a really coordinated effort.” Measures that helped improve the traffic situation at Farnborough included limiting thoroughfares on the way to the site to one-way traffic and establishing separate lanes for buses.

Some participants were more positive about the event once inside. Rolls-Royce representative Dave Gould said that even though it took taken him five hours to get from his hotel to his stand, the event went well. “Once you’re in here, then it’s OK,” Gould said. He said MAKS was more on a level with smaller air shows, like one in Beijing, but the rapid expansion in the Russian market meant that it was unlikely foreign businesses would be put off. For some of the participants, MAKS even offered an atmosphere that could not be found elsewhere. “I like this event,” Jean Herve, a representative for French company Le Guellec, said jovially as he waited for workmen to sweep water away from his stand after a pipe burst overnight at the Seimens’ exhibit, flooding the pavilion. “It is more festive here,” Herve said. “Le Bourget is more about business.” And with shashlik stands, myriad fast food, souvenir stalls and even a giant hot air balloon in the shape of a can of Baltika beer, the event had the air of a carnival or championship sports event.

As for the problems with logistics, the writing may have already been on the wall last week — or, perhaps more accurately, inauspiciously falling off. Boris Alyoshin, head of the Federal Industry Agency, which organized the event, offered a preview for journalists Aug. 16. Just as he was extolling the event’s virtues, the power cut out, silencing the microphones and plunging the hall into darkness. As journalists stood around in the gloom, two posters for the show came loose from the wall and crashed noisily to the ground.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of the Sochi Olympics Folly: Russia Already Planning for Missile Attack

When was the last time you heard about an Olympic venue announcing, seven years in advance, the need for a missile defense system to protect a site? It’s a sure and certain testament to the insanity of placing the games in Chechnya’s backyard. The IOC is, quite simply, gambling with peoples’ lives for no good reason. The International Herald Tribune reports:

The Russian military on Monday deployed new air-defense missiles, which the air force chief said could be used to protect the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi. Col.-Gen. Alexander Zelin said he already had made an official proposal to use the S-400 missile defense system to provide security for the Games. “The organizing committee will prepare the city for the Olympics, while we will prepare air-defense systems and ensure the security of the Games,” Zelin was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. The S-400 is capable of hitting aerial targets at ranges up to 400 kilometers (250 miles) and altitude of up to 30 kilometers (99,000 feet), far excelling its predecessor, the S-300, Russian news reports said. The first S-400 units — which each include a missile launcher, a radar and a control vehicle — were put on combat duty Monday near Moscow. Zelin and other officials boasted the new system’s ability to engage difficult targets, such as ballistic missiles’ warheads and stealth aircraft. Asked whether the S-400 could also be used in a proposed joint missile defense system with European nations, Zelin said “the issue should be considered in detail.” “If relevant directives and orders are received, we’ll take up this task and work on it,” Zelin was quoted as saying. Russian military officials have proposed using the S-300 and the S-400 as part of a prospective joint European missile defense that Russia has discussed with NATO nations. These discussions have not yielded any practical results, and prospects of a deal looked bleak amid Russia’s increasingly strained ties with the West.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Sochi Flytrap

Blogger Paul Goble explains how the Kremlin may have bitten off more than it can chew in winning the Sochi games, providing its enemies with a huge platform for attack. For instance, it’s going to come out that Sochi isn’t really a Russian city, certainly not a Slavic one, and that its giant population of 20,000 Muslims hasn’t been able to get permission to build a Mosque. Goble points out how the Kremlin has outraged Muslims by opposing independence for Kosovo and, in classically paranoid neo-Soviet style, attempting to cut off their foreign aid.

The International Olympics Committee’s decision last week to name the Sochi as the venue for the 2014 winter games is being widely celebrated in Moscow as a triumph for Vladimir Putin and a recognition by the world community of Russia’s successful recovery. But regardless of how true either of those propositions may be, the Sochi games, even though they are still seven years in the future, are already having an impact on the calculations of various groups concerning three critical ethno-national issues in Southern Russia and the Northern Caucasus.

In an essay posted online last Friday, Sergei Markedonov, one of Moscow’s most thoughtful commentators on the Caucasus, argues that the games themselves and the attention they inevitably attract will affect the Circassians, the Abkhazians, and Georgian-Russian ties. First of all, Markedonov suggests, the games will highlight an issue to which the Circassian nationalities – the Adygei, the Kabardinians, the Cherkess, and the Shapsug – have long been seeking to attract attention: assigning responsibility for the expulsion of their forefathers from the Caucasus in the 19th century and securing redress for that act. In the 1860s and 1870s, the tsarist authorities expelled more than a million Circassians to the Ottoman Empire, an action that Circassians in Russia and abroad insist was a genocide but that Moscow has consistently denied was anything of the sort. Now, the Circassians will have a broader stage on which to make their case.

Although Sochi today lies in an ethnic Russian region, its name and its history are Circassians, facts that the nearby Adygeis and the Circassians abroad are certain to make much of. At the very least, their campaign is likely to tie Moscow’s hands as far as folding Adygeia into the Russian region surrounding it until after 2014.

Second, because Sochi is located so close to Abkhazia, that longstanding “frozen conflict” will become more difficult to address in the run up to the games. Indeed, Markedonov says, for many in Moscow, “when we write Sochi, we have Abkhazia on our minds.” On the one hand, Moscow will be promoting the development of the broader Sochi area that includes Abkhazia, something that will do little to weaken secessionist sentiment there. And on the other hand, the Moscow analyst argues, the Russian government will be reluctant to take any steps, including unilateral recognition or the use of force, that could undermine the positive and upbeat message about itself that Russian propagandists are already insisting upon. Instead, Moscow will certainly want to project itself as a peacemaker, as a country interested in reducing tensions and solving problems rather than exacerbating them. But that may prove more difficult, Markedonov continues, than Moscow may currently assume.

And that leads to the third set of ethno-national issues that the Sochi Olympics are already affecting: relations between Moscow and Tbilisi. The Russian government can reasonably expect that the publicity around Sochi is likely to restrain the Georgian authorities from using force: After all, if Tbilisi did, the whole world would be watching. At the same time, however, Moscow, — which would clearly benefit for purposes of the games in having more cooperative relations with Georgia — may find its hands tied as well: It could seek improved ties by sacrificing Abkhazia and South Osetia – but leaders in both might then act in ways neither Moscow nor Tbilisi would like.

And any retreat from Moscow’s forward leaning policy in these two “unrecognized” states would generate anger among Russian nationalists and imperialists who already believe that Putin has made too many concessions to others for his personal needs rather than for the national interests of the country. But looming behind all of these ethnic situations is the deteriorating security situation across the entire northern Caucasus. As an article in today’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta” noted, Moscow is worried about the situation there because of rising crime and greater activism by rebel units. Nonetheless, Putin can count on Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov to stay on message: Over the weekend, Kadyrov claimed there is no war in his republic and invited people from around the world to visit “the Chechen Switzerland” – those cities and towns where the post-Soviet wars were earlier most intense.

But in other remarks at the same time, Kadyrov advanced some demands that suggest he too may be counting on Sochi to affect Moscow’s calculations: He suggested that Chechnya must be allowed to retain more of its petroleum earnings and be helped to build its own refining capability as a step toward energy independence.

UPDATE ON JULY 11. Ethnic communities affected by the Sochi Olympics are already weighing in. A press spokesman for the Abkhaz president said in a Kreml.org commentary posted online yesterday that the Abkhaz are pleased that the games will be held near their territory. But various social organizations in Adygeia have protested the decision, although government officials there say they support it.

UPDATE ON JULY 16. Ravza Ramazanova, the heaad of the Yasin Muslim Organization in Sochi has expresed the hope that media attention to her city will force the local officials to allow for the construction of a mosque for the city’s 20,000 Muslims. She told Regions.ru today that her group has been seeking approval to build a mosque for 13 years without success.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s National Sport? Murder. Oh, the Glory of Murder!

It’s just too bad for Russia that murder is not an Olympic sport. Were it, Russia would surely dominate the globe. Indeed, Russia has once again outdone itself in spectacle of barbarism. It has chosen to celebrate its victory over Nazi Germany by freeing an attempted murderer/assassin and then sending him to the Olympic games. If you didn’t know this was true, you’d swear it was a joke. The Moscow Times reports:

Four-time Olympic biathlon champion Alexander Tikhonov [pictured center] was convicted Monday of plotting to poison Kemerovo Governor Aman Tuleyev, but his three-year prison sentence was commuted as part of a 2005 amnesty. The Novosibirsk Regional Court convicted Tikhonov, who won team gold for the Soviet Union in four straight Winter Olympics from 1968 to 1980, of hiring two men to poison Tuleyev in early 2000. The two men subsequently told authorities about the plot, prosecutors said. Tikhonov, 60, was released in the courtroom Monday under a 2005 amnesty in connection with the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, Interfax reported.

He said his first order of business would be to prepare for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Interfax reported. Tikhonov, who has maintained that he is innocent, is president of the Russian Biathlon Union. Sochi was also a prominent theme in Tikhonov’s final statement to the court Monday, Gazeta.ru reported.

“For us it’s not so much an economic plus as it is a moral and psychological factor,” Tikhonov said of Sochi’s selection to host the games, Gazeta.ru said. “No one knows, and I will tell you: The Koreans spent more than $300 million for their selection campaign.”
Sochi beat Pyeongchang, South Korea, by just four votes, 51-47 at the International Olympic Committee’s selection in Guatemala earlier this month.

Tikhonov’s brother, Viktor, was convicted in 2002 of conspiring in the purported plot and sentenced to four years in prison.

Prosecutors said metals magnate Mikhail Zhivilo ordered the Tikhonov brothers to kill Tuleyev in early 2000 because his factories had been taken over by Tuleyev’s administration for alleged financial wrongdoing. The Tikhonov brothers were arrested in August 2000. Alexander Tikhonov was released a month later for health reasons and went to Austria for treatment. Russian authorities lost track of him after he checked out of a clinic there. In December 2001, Russia asked Interpol to help find him. He returned to Russia last year to face charges.

Viktor Tikhonov was released from prison in August 2004.

Zhivilo left for France before the brothers were detained by the FSB. He was arrested there at Russia’s request in 2001, but a French court refused to extradite him and ordered his release. He has reportedly since received political asylum in France.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !