The State of Affairs in Russia

[Grinning_Colossus]

Sochi will be an armed camp. Anyone who looks remotely Caucasian will be shot, including some members of the local indigenous population as well as some athletes from Caucasian countries, but there won't be a terrorist attack. There may well be several in Moscow, Petersburg, Volgograd, Stravropol, etc. during the games, however.

[Queequeg]

Ethnic Russian converts, Neonazis, Communists, etc.....I really think there's a ton of groups in Russia that are going to view this as the best way to humiliate the Putin administration.

[Neil]

Neonazis?  What are they even doing in Russia?

[DGuller]

Neonazis?  What are they even doing in Russia?

Russians have a pretty fascist mindset, so it's not surprising that some go for that extreme.  The misunderstanding that happened in 1941 shouldn't forever poison the relationship between Nazis and Russians.

[Neil]

So they're not really neonazis then, but just fascists.

Why would fascists hate Putin?

[alfred russel]

I was visiting Auschwitz. My guide was going through all the places the Slavic Poles were killed, held, and tortured (from the tour my impression was that the casualties were probably evenly divided between Jews and Slavic Poles). I asked the guide, "the nazis were so bad for the poles, so why is it I see swastika graffiti in Warsaw?"

He said, "People are ignorant. For example, there are two popular soccer teams in Krakow. They taunt each other. One side calls the other 'dirty dogs'. And that side calls the other 'dirty jews'. It is just ignorance." 

I think I understood. It can be explained by "eastern europe". It is fertile ground for any stupid idea.

[DGuller]

So they're not really neonazis then, but just fascists.

Why would fascists hate Putin?

There isn't as much distinction in Russian between fascists and Nazis.  To Russians, Nazi Germany is the face of fascism, and WW2 Germans were most commonly referred to as fascists.

[Queequeg]

Nazi has the word Socialism in it. Communists didn't want people to think of the Nazis as Socialists.

[Savonarola]

I would like to be the first to congratulate Russia on her sweep of all 98 Gold Medals:

Russian government repressing journalists ahead of Sochi
by Alice Speri @alicesperi January 28, 2014 12:15AM ET

Obstruction by government authorities has led to fear and self-censorship among Russian journalists and severely limited coverage of the upcoming Sochi Olympics, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) charged in a report released on Tuesday. 

The group, which monitors press freedom worldwide, detailed a repressive climate for journalism in Sochi, where the Winter Games kick off in less than two weeks and where arrests, tapped phones and threats have led to a virtual media silence in Russia on many controversial Olympic-related issues.

The report detailed one case in which a correspondent for a major Russian news agency — who was not named — recently filed three stories from Sochi. One dealt with the arrest of journalist Nikolai Yarst, a case that many saw as politically motivated. A second story detailed malfunctions at a hastily built compound for residents displaced by Olympic construction. A third was about the bad weather headed for the city, where torrential rains have already flooded newly constructed roads.

Yet none of the stories made it to the wires.

"You may have a storm, a twister and even a 9-Richter-scale earthquake. Still, we have to write that all skies are clear over Sochi," the unnamed correspondent told the CPJ.

Many free speech advocates see that episode as descriptive of hard times for journalism in the Olympic host city. While some reports on corruption, environmental damage, the exploitation of migrant workers and other abuses have emerged, this was largely through the independent documentation of activists, rights groups and foreign journalists. In many cases, both state-controlled and private media in Russia have ignored these issues and reported only on events and statements "officially cleared for coverage," the CPJ said.

Journalists cited in the report described pro-government television networks staging interviews with people speaking scripted lines but passing them off as off-the-cuff remarks from ordinary Sochi residents. A national TV channel aired a program depicting residents evicted from their homes as "greedy, unscrupulous people trying to blackmail the state." Human Rights Watch has documented uncompensated and poorly compensated evictions, but the issue has received relatively scarce media attention.

When fear alone doesn't work, the local branch of Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor — the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media — interferes with media organizations, the CPJ said. Since 2012, the agency has started 45 administrative cases against Sochi media outlets, on trivial pretexts like the failure to leave a copy of the paper with local libraries.

While some reports on corruption, environmental damage, the exploitation of migrant workers and other abuses have emerged, this was largely through the independent documentation of activists, rights groups and foreign journalists.
Self-censorship is widespread in Sochi, particularly since media organizations depend on public subsidies and official permits to operate, the report detailed.

"Nobody calls me. Nobody says to me what I should or should not write about. But I know what the topics that anger the authorities are," said Svetlana Sagradova, editor of a local magazine who said she practices self-censorship for fear of losing her license. "I don't want any problems, and this is why I don't publish much."

The directive to "stop spoiling the country's image," may be unspoken but is clear, said another journalist who was removed from the Sochi beat after her critical stories.

The CPJ report called on Russian authorities to let journalists do their jobs unhindered. It also called on Olympic sponsors and the International Olympic Committee to demand that press freedom is protected. "The International Olympic Committee as the Games' organizers must engage with Russian authorities to ensure that freedom of the press and freedom of expression are unobstructed in Sochi both during and after the Games," said the CPJ's Europe and Central Asia coordinator, Nina Ognianova.

Critics denounced the IOC as largely passive and called for the establishment of human-rights benchmarks for the selection of Olympic hosts. "Those benchmarks must be monitored and evaluated as thoroughly and with the same vigor that the IOC applies to monitoring a country's readiness with Olympic venues and material resources," said Jane Buchanan, Human Rights Watch's lead researcher on Sochi.

The CPJ also called on foreign reporters to investigate the stories their local colleagues have been unable to pursue. The report details harassment of foreign journalists but notes that Russian media will pick up critical stories that have already been covered internationally.

The Sochi Games are widely perceived in Russia as a project very dear to Vladimir Putin, and the Olympic-related media crackdown is seen as being in line with his repressive rule in recent years. In his third term as president, he has signed a number of restrictive laws, quickly and with little public debate.

Putin has criminalized defamation, expanded the definition of treason and blacklisted websites with loosely defined "unlawful content." A controversial "foreign agents" law passed in 2012 effectively obstructs most nongovernmental organizations, and the much discussed "homosexual propaganda" law has chilled news coverage of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, including recent waves of homophobic violence.

"If the media cover the LGBT rights in anything that resembles a sympathetic way, they could be blamed with producing gay propaganda and punished for it," Konstantin Iablotckii, a Moscow-based LGBT activist, told the CPJ. "Better to play it safe."

Violence against journalists is also on the rise in Russia, with 16 journalists murdered in the past decade and a deeply entrenched culture of impunity.

A representative for Putin declined to respond to the allegations, citing the president's "tight schedule up to the start of the Olympics."

[Syt]

http://sochi.fbk.info/en/price/

Russian officials including Vladimir Putin have recently claimed that the Olympics cost $6.5 bn. This is not true. Citizens of Russia paid nearly $45.8 bn for the Sochi Games. The Anti-Corruption Foundation explains how this adds up.

State budget, $25.1 bn

Two state-owned companies, Olimpstroy and Russian Railways (RZD), received over a half of this money. Olimpstroy spent $6.3 bn to construct 11 sport venues; most of them were built at unreasonably high prices. Most notably, Fisht Olympic Stadium cost 2.5 times as much per seat compared to similar venues.

Russian Railways received even more than Olimpstroy from the state budget: $7.6 bn were allocated for some 20 infrastructure projects. For example, the state monopoly took part in constructing the most expensive Olympic facility - the Adler-Krasnaya Polyana motorway and railway line. This facility cost $8.7 bn and helped Vladimir Yakunin, Arkadiy Rotenberg and Gennadiy Timchenko, friends of Putin, to get hold of the money.

From 2008 to 2014, the government spent $0.58 bn to ensure safety during the Olympics, fourfold the amount spent on grants for Olympic athletes. On top of that, $0.56 bn were given out to upgrade health resorts belonging to the Department of Presidential Affairs.

KRASNODAR Region budget, $1.0 bn

Another large expenditure item is a $2.6-billion federal transfer to the Krasnodar Krai region. Besides, the region also spent 1.0 bn from own funds, mostly to pay the shares of Center  Omega, a 100% Krasnodar Krai-owned company  which built the Adler Arena skating center at a cost exceeding the cost of similar venues by 2.4 times.

State-owned companies' expenditures, $10.5 bn

Gazprom and Russian Railways account for the largest Olympic expenditures, being $4.5 and 2.0 bn respectively. The rest was spent by Sberbank and state-owned energy companies (FSK, Inter RAO, MRSK). These funds cannot be considered private, because these are rates paid by customers of monopolies: railway fares, electricity and gas tariffs. For example, massive investment projects of Russian Railways are funded yearly from the state budget.

Vneshekonombank loans, $7.6 bn

All major private investors - billionaires Vladimir Potanin, Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg - have received substantial financial support from Vneshekonombank, reaching 90% of the whole project costs. This is a very high leverage. Commercial banks usually do not finance over 66% of the project.

This fall, it has been reported that, out of 20 Vneshekonombank loans for $7.6 bn, nine loans for $5.8 bn need to be restructured. According to the business newspaper Vedomosti, these projects are unprofitable with loans being unrecoverable without additional support. Vladimir Potanin, one of the recipients of state loans, also admitted this in an interview.

Private investments, $1.6 bn

In their statements, officials referred to investments of Gazprom, Sberbank, Russian Railways and other government-affiliated entities as private investments. According to the IFRS, these investments are considered investments of state-owned companies. In fact, private investments account for less than 4% of the Olympic budget, not 60%, as Alexander Zhukov, President of the Russian Olympic Committee, previously claimed. These are primarily billionaires' own funds they invested along with state-owned Vneshekonombank loans.

[Tamas]

The whole idea that states should spend tax money on sport events is ridiculous to begin with. It is only natural that it is the hotbed of corruption

[Liep]

The whole idea that states should spend tax money on sport events is ridiculous to begin with. It is only natural that it is the hotbed of corruption

Of course, in a more reasonable country the corruptors would at least make a little effort to conceal the corruption from the corruptees.

[Tamas]

The whole idea that states should spend tax money on sport events is ridiculous to begin with. It is only natural that it is the hotbed of corruption

Of course, in a more reasonable country the corruptors would at least make a little effort to conceal the corruption from the corruptees.

Of course. But in less developed societies, like Russia or Hungary, you don`t really have to, as examples are clearly showing.

[Syt]

[Tamas]

I can give you the Average Hungarian Answer to those:

-jews
-we are naturally good at sports, period
-jews
-jews and gypsies