World press on Sochi Olympic Games (June 19, 2013)

The Daily Mail published an article entitled "Putin's £30bn calamity games" devoted to 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi. "Collapsing buildings. Colossal corruption. Contract killings. The race to complete Russia's Winter Olympic village mired in scandal," the artcle's subheading reads.

 

The author of the article, Will Stewart, notes that Russian President Vladimir Putin is facing many problems concerning the Olympic Games. 

 

"Problems Putin has had to cope with include corruption on an industrial scale, collapsing tunnels, exploding gas pipes, buildings damaged by landslides and a couple of mafia contract killings," he writes.

 

‘We know perfectly well that the timing of finishing the construction is beyond tight, construction quality is terrible, and the work in Sochi is done mostly by the migrant workers from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, who are in slave-like conditions," the author cites former prime minister and one of Putin's major opponents Boris Nemtsov as saying.

 

"There is a feeling of chaos and brinkmanship. Marriott hotels announced recently that one of its three planned Sochi hotels was on hold, and two others would not be ready by the time of the Olympics, due to ‘circumstances beyond our control’. Soon afterwards – presumably after phone calls were made – they revealed everything was back on track," the article reads.

"A warning from an interesting source came recently when US-based Professor Nina Khrushcheva suggested the Sochi ski slopes may be the undoing of Putin. She knows a thing or two about the subject: her great-grandfather Nikita Khrushchev was toppled by his own politburo ‘colleagues’ in 1964," the article reads."I’m scared to give forecasts, but I don’t have a feeling that Putin will stay much longer than Sochi," the author cites Khrushcheva as saying.