Photo by Patrick Semansky/AP
Sochi Olympics
02.07.14
Meet Putin’s Olympic Torch-Lighting Paramour
Who was that lithe, bendable gymnast setting alight the Olympic flame? Why none other than Putin’s rumored longtime mistress.
“I’m aware of this [the speculation that Kabaeva will light the flame], I was told of this by [Kremlin spokesman] Dmitry Peskov,” he told state TV on Wednesday. “These are the usual red herrings. We have many outstanding sportspeople who are significant and known in the whole world and I am not going to interfere in this process.”
But there Kabaeva was, a former Olympic champion in rhythmic gymnastics and member of parliament, marching in the final leg of the ceremony alongside Russian tennis champion Maria Sharapova, flashing a toothy smile as she held the torch aloft (apparently sleeping with one of the torchbearers doesn’t count as interfering). And Putin had no idea that the woman he’s rumored to have been shtupping since 2008 would have any part in this year’s games. He was so out of the loop that a Kremlin spokesperson told him of these malicious rumors—“the usual red herrings.”
But why the secrecy? The fact is that Putin has never publically acknowledged his rumored relationship with the lithe, bendable Kabaeva. But it has always been a touchy subject for the Russian strongman, who closed down the newspaper Moskovsky Korrespondent after it reported that Putin was leaving his longtime wife, Lyudmila, to marry Kabaeva. On the heels of Putin and Lyudmila’s televised divorce announcement last summer, Putin’s trusty spokesman was oblique when confronting the usual “red herrings” —this time that Putin and Kabaeva had been joined as husband and wife. “It’s his decision and he’s not obliged to talk about his private life,” he told the newspaper Izvestia. In January, reports surfaced that Kabaeva gave birth to her second love child with Putin, who is rumored to have shipped her to his “palatial retreat” in...Sochi.In January, reports surfaced that Kabaeva gave birth to her second love child with Putin, who is rumored to have shipped her to his “palatial retreat” in Sochi.
After all, sleeping with Russia’s muscular president is seemingly great way to advance one’s career—to carry the Olympic flame, or, in the case of another alleged mistress, to be hired as his personal photographer despite not being a particularly good photographer (see Yana Lapikova’s cat portrait and other works showcasing her aptitude with a camera).
We will likely never know if Kabaeva earned her Olympic torch spot through her relationship with Putin—or if such a relationship even exists—because in a country where information is tightly controlled by the government, information about the those in government can only exist in the realm of speculation and “red herrings.”
Photo by Artur Levedev/Reuters
World News
02.08.14
Sochi’s Internal Refugees
In
the shadow of the Winter Games in Sochi, families kicked out of their
homes to make way for Olympic construction are desperate for some
compensation for their lost lives.
The boy’s mother, Natalya, reminisced about her happy but lost life in Sochi—and with the Olympic Games just days away in her hometown, she could think of nothing other than her family’s potentially homeless future. “Not now,” the family’s neighbor, Andrew Martynov—also a victim of forced evictions—told the boy with a weak smile. He was not in the mood for playing with toy cars, either. Sochi’s big moment has arrived and many athletes and visitors are surely giddy with excitement. It’s a joy that cannot be shared by the evicted families whose plots of land became highways or hotels.
Last week, days before the official opening of the 2014 Winter Games, Sochi traffic policemen checked Martynov’s documents on the road, and decided they didn’t like his registration. They took his license plates away, leaving the professional driver without a job for at least a month. “The Olympic Games, like a big bulldozer, keep rolling all over our lives,” Martynov said with a sigh.Their last hope for justice is now in the European Court of Human Rights, which one day might oblige the Russian authorities to pay them some compensation for their lost home.
Vova’s efforts to amuse the adults around him remained futile. He had poured his toys right over the thick files on his grandmother’s bed, full of court statements and letters, gray as cement, from the authorities: the evidence of the Savelyev family’s two-year-long struggle to defend themselves against the inevitable Olympic demolition. In the past, such papers had bought time for their family home, which held nine members of the Savelyev clan. The house stood until the end of 2012. But eventually, the family lost their case at each level of the Russian court system. Their last hope for justice is now in the European Court of Human Rights, which one day might oblige the Russian authorities to pay them some compensation for their lost home.
Driving around Sochi, guests of the Winter Olympics might notice the layers of the city’s history: Stalin-era spa hotels decorated with neoclassical columns, pompous arches, grandiose fountains and statues, next to busts of Soviet heroes lying under magnolia and cypress trees—all that remains of the once-peaceful small town on the Black Sea. Now, overlaying it all is the glass and concrete jungle of the Olympic era.
What will be the memories of the 2014 Winter Games for the children of Sochi?After all, children played a key role in the Opening Ceremony of the Games, where a little girl in a white dress appeared to walk on air, carrying a red balloon, floating above scenes out of Russian history.
One child, seven-year-old Kirill Dragon, remembered that right before the whole world arrived in his home town, authorities demolished his family’s outhouse and built a huge highway in place of the green lawn where he used to play, raising a 12-foot-high wall right in front of the house and blocking the view of the snowy mountain peaks.
The long scar on Vova’s forehead might remind him one day of the time his family lost their home, and he had to move to a temporary shelter. A little baby at the time, he suffered a fall in the midst of the move and received a concussion. By the Olympics, he was healthy again playing with his cars in a tiny and stuffy room of nine square meters, serving multiple purposes: bedroom, office, dining room and play area for two children.
Almost every family in Vova’s multi-stoey building, the former Soviet Hotel Neptun in Sochi, had lost their houses to natural disasters, fire or pre-Olympic legal disputes and forced evictions. In vain, they hoped that bits of aid would spill over to them from the Olympic party. As athletes from all over the world were arriving to compete, little Kirill on Accacia street invented his own competitions, based on dumping old tires and construction waste—whoever could throw garbage farther, won. On the other side of the wall, cars zipped by on the new federal highway and could not see Kirrill’s games.
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