Any day soon, a bomb may go off in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. And if it does, it will be the nightmare that Vladimir Putin has been spending billions of roubles trying to prevent. The Winter Games, which start in February, have long been his pet project, designed to show the world how complete is his control over the territories of which he is president. The sudden rush of amnesties is just his latest ploy to sanitise the image of the Games.
With its sub-tropical climate, palm-fringed beaches, and sulphur springs, Sochi has been Russia’s most sybaritic winter holiday spot since the days of the tsars: it’s the Riviera of the Caucasus whose high mountains stretch eastwards, with embattled Chechnya just two hundred miles away. As a narrow ribbon of land where sea and snow-capped peaks are in close proximity, it was the obvious venue for the winter Olympics, and it has now been transformed by Putin’s hi-tech new infrastructure.
But Doku Umarov, the Chechen Islamist leader and self-styled Emir of the Caucasus, has promised to use “maximum force” to stop these Games. In a video message released in July, he declared: “They plan to hold the Olympics on the bones of our ancestors, on the bones of many, many Muslims buried on our land by the Black Sea. As mujahideen we are required not to permit that, using any methods that Allah allows us.” » | Michael Church | Thursday, December 26, 2013
