Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 2 – The consequences
of Vladimir Putin’s much-ballyhooed Winter Olympics in the Subtropics continue
to unfold with officials cutting back on the promises they made to develop the
tourism industry in the North Caucasus even as they continue to persecute those
who objected to holding the competition in Sochi.
Two weeks ago, Aleksandr Khloponin,
then presidential plenipotentiary to the region, announced that there wasn’t
enough money, enough infrastructure or enough snow to build four of the seven
resorts that it had announced with much fanfare during the run-up to the
Olympiad (wordyou.ru/v-rossii/potemkinskie-kurorty.html).
According to Khloponin, Moscow has
changed its plans not only because of the costs of actions in Ukraine but
because the estimates of what it would have to be spent to open all seven had
been dramatically low and wrong. In fact, he said, to build even a few of these
facilities would cost “almost more than the Olympiad in Sochi.”
But the problems are even more
serious than that, journalist Timur Izmayilov notes. One of the resorts in Ingushetia which opened
in March had to shut down immediately because “there was no snow” – and local
residents say that “it is practically never there.” Plans to open another in Ingushetia have now
been cancelled.
Things are no better in Daghestan, he
continues. The Matlas resort had hoped to attract “hundreds of thousands of
skiers,” but “there is no snow” -- and it is still hard to get to because of
problems with infrastructure. And in North Osetia, plans for another resort
were cancelled when it became obvious that Moscow would have to spend 20
billion rubles (550 million US dollars) for a single access bridge.
Moscow planners said that the new
resorts it planned for the North Caucasus would have to attract “a few more
than ten million skiers a year” in order
to be profitable. But “not a single foreign investor believed” that would be
possible, and consequently, no dollars, euros or even Mongolian tugriks have
been flowing in.
Russian spending on Ukraine has also
had an impact, pushing all discussions of “the problems with the budget in the
North Caucasus to second place,” especially given that the new presidential
plenipotentiary Sergey Melikov has said that addressing economic problems and
fighting militants are his chief jobs.
Residents of the North Caucasus have
always been skeptical about Moscow’s plans for what are turning out to be “Potemkin
resorts.” In their view, these places
won’t provide jobs but rather are intended to improve the image of the region. And both they and Moscow accountants have been
shocked about the ways in which the resorts have been another channel for
corruption.
Izmayilov concludes his report by
suggesting that “it is possible that in the future, when the war in the North
Caucasus will have become an event of the distant past, 10 to 15 million
tourishs will come to this remarkably beautiful area. But today,” he continues,
“we can only count on lovers of extreme tourism who can get an adrenalin rush
from us for free.”
Meanwhile, there are two other
pieces of fallout from the Sochi Games.
Environmentalists around the world are now collecting signatures calling
for the release of Yevgeny Vitishko who is serving three years in prison for exposing
the ecological damage inflicted on the Sochi region in preparation for the
Olympics (bellona.ru/articles_ru/articles_2014/vitishko_signatures).
And
a court in Nalchik gave a suspended six-month term to Anzor Akhokhov,
ostensibly for illegal possession of explosives but in fact for his role in
organizing Circassion protests in advance of the Sochi Olympics (nazaccent.ru/content/12233-organizator-cherkesskoj-akcii-protiv-olimpiady-osuzhden.html).
Since Sochi, Putin has moved on to
Ukraine, and much of the rest of the world has moved on to other things as
well. But for many people who were swept
up in events around those competitions, the Olympiad hasn’t really ended and
doesn’t appear likely to come to a conclusion anytime soon.
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