(RIA Novosti – TBILISI, May 2, 2013) Georgia will not boycott next year’s Winter Olympics in the Russian city of Sochi after the country’s National Olympic Committee voted unanimously Thursday in favor of taking part. The question of a boycott has repeatedly arisen in Georgia as a result of the 2008 war with host national Russia. The two countries still do not have formal diplomatic relations. The Games will be
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Irina Filatova – April 30, 2013) SOCHI The problems on Ruslan Zokhidov’s mind are not typical for a young man of his age: he is the least likely person to be found nattily dressed at a trendy night club or entering a university lugging a pile of books. Instead, Zokhidov, 19, lugs building materials and wears rubber boots for his job as a construction
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 29, 2013) With the end of ice hockey championships, Sochi 2014 organizer Dmitry Chernyshenko has declared that the dress rehearsal for the Olympics is a success. Test events held in the framework of the 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games ended with the final game of the International Ice Hockey World Championships in Sochi over the weekend. Over 3,000 athletes competed in the events,
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – April 11, 2013) The number 303 stood Wednesday on a digital clock on Manezh Square that counts down the days to the 2014 Sochi Olympics, and President Vladimir Putin is watching it closely as the government races to make the final preparations for the Games. But that clock may be counting down to other major events as well. The Kremlin has such
(Interfax – MOSCOW, April 9, 2013) Physical education and sport in Russia have improved over the past seven years in the eyes of respondents polled by the Russian Public Opinion Study Center (VTsIOM). The percentage of positive opinions grew from 42% to 59%. The negative opinions declined from 44% to 30%, VTsIOM told Interfax. The majority of positive opinions were expressed by young Russians (70%). VTsIOM polled 1,600 respondents in
(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Aleksandras Budrys – March 19, 2013) Russia’s Culture Ministry has presented to the government a bill on 10-day visa-free entry for “non-dangerous” foreigners to participate in cultural, sporting and business events, Minister Vladimir Medinsky said on Tuesday. “We have developed a number of draft laws in this regard,” Medinsky told Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev at a conference on the development of the tourism industry in
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – Februry 14, 2013) Hours after the International Olympic Committee’s Tuesday decision to remove wrestling from the Summer Games after 2016, Russia threw its full weight behind a campaign to bring the sport back. Russian Olympic Committee chief Alexander Zhukov a State Duma Vice Speaker and the country’s top Olympic official emphasized in an appeal to the IOC that “wrestling is
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Irina Filatova – February 8, 2013) The countrywide celebrations marking the one-year countdown to the start of the Winter Olympics in Sochi were overshadowed Thursday by a high-profile dismissal at the Russian Olympic Committee. During a two-day inspection of Olympic construction sites, President Vladimir Putin fired the committee’s deputy president, Akhmed Bilalov, because of skyrocketing construction costs and delays in completion of the Russkiye Gorki
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Nikolaus von Twickel – February 7, 2013) One year before the Winter Olympics are to kick off, it looks like Sochi 2014 is getting mired in controversy. While the country’s leaders have made it clear that the Olympics are a matter of national pride and prestige, national and international media attention is increasingly focused on the unprecedented $50 billion price tag, allegations of massive corruption,
(Interfax – February 6, 2013) A senior Russian government minister has dismissed allegations that migrant workers involved in preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi are being cheated out of wages and denied adequate rest, food and housing, the privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax reported on 6 February. With almost exactly a year to go until the Games, Dmitriy Kozak, the deputy prime minister responsible for overseeing the preparations,
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Irina Filatova – February 7, 2013) [Chart here http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/sochi-scorecard-lots-of-progress-but-lots-to-be-done/475172.html] An inflatable 8-meter brown bear floating off into the Moscow sunset followed by applause from the stands during the closing ceremony of the 1980 Summer Olympics is perhaps one of the most colorful moments in the country’s sports history. It took Russia 30 years to win the right to host the high-profile event again, with the
(Moscow Times – moscowtimes.com – Nikolaus von Twickel and Irina Filatova – Februry 4, 2013) One year before they kick off, the Sochi Winter Olympics have already bagged a world record. They will go down as the most expensive games in history. The cost will top 1.5 trillion rubles ($50 billion) in state and private investment, and three-quarters of that sum has already been spent, as shown in figures released
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Lena Smirnova – February 1, 2013) When the Baltimore Ravens square off against the San Francisco 49ers at Sunday’s Super Bowl, the first question on the minds of American football fans in Moscow will be which team will emerge as the national champion. A close second: where to go to watch the game in a city whose residents associate “football” with kicking a black-and-white ball
(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, January 29 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/01/window-on-eurasia-concerns-about-sochi.html) President Vladimir Putin named Ramazan Abdulatipov, head of Daghestan in place of Magomedsalam Magomedov who will now work on nationality issues in the Presidential Administration because the Kremlin is worried continuing instability there could threaten the Sochi Olympiad in 2014, according to commentators in the Russian Federation. Akhmed Yarlykhanov, a senior researcher at the Moscow Institute of Ethnology
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