Putin’s Sochi dream shattered by Ukraine’s nightmare
As the Ukrainian Parliament assumed presidential powers, Ukraine’s revolution is destroying President Putin’s $51,000.000.000 Olympic dreams.
(Globe and Mail) In this dream, Russia is rich again, a place where the reported $51-billion cost of the Winter Olympics in Sochi is no object. It’s a nation of impressive architecture and smiling volunteers who speak English but think like Russians. “Russia – Great, New, Open!” brag the billboards around the Olympic city. (“Open”? Sochi has high fences, surveillance balloons and warships off the coast; every phone call and e-mail is monitored.)
It looks like the strongman was so busy looting his country he didn’t have time to check on whether the peasants were being fed.
I suspect this guy was ratker closer to on of our own appartachniks than a real thug.