Exactly How Dangerous Will The Winter Olympics Be?
Given the traditional Russian response to fighting in the Caucuses, slash, burn, piss on the ashes, I think it's fair to say that between now and February 14, 2014 things around the Black Sea are going to be pretty dicey.
Over the last two days, Russia (Volgograd specifically) has seen two suicide bombings that have killed a total of 31 people. Here’s the first one at the Volgograd train station which happened on the 29th.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5uVT51Poa0
And here’s the bus bombing that happened today.
So, my answer is that the Winter Olympics in Sochi will actually be very dangerous indeed. Sochi is a resort town on the Black Sea (couple of maps for you below) and it’s somewhat close to the Caucus Mountains which is where lots of Chechen rebels live. Who are Chechen rebels, you ask? Well, they trained this guy who trained his brother…
Yes, that’s Tamerlan and Dzkokhar Tsarnaev on their way to kill and maim a bunch of people in Boston in April of this year.
Chechen rebels are militant Muslims who want to defect from the Russian Federation and have their own Sharia ruled theocracy where no one is happy and lots of people are dead (very common in Sunni theocratic states, unfortunately). Russia and the Chechens have been fighting since the days of Imperial Russia and, since the re-ignition of the conflict in 1990s, the Russian military has killed at least 100,000 Chechens in a war that has basically been going on since the early 1800s. Here’s a map of the Caucus region.
So, the Boston bomber who received training received it in Dagestan if I recall correctly and his family was from there. Then, if you look to the West, you’ll see North Ossetia which is Russian and right across the border from what is South Ossetia, part of the nation of Georgia. In 2008, the President of Georgia decided to occupy South Ossetia…Russia then invaded in an assault so fast and overwhelming that the President of Georgia actually ate his own tie while waiting to do an interview with the BBC. There are still Russian troops in South Ossetia as part of the peace treaty. No question who got the better part of that deal.
So, given the traditional Russian response to fighting in the Caucuses, slash, burn, piss on the ashes, I think it’s fair to say that between now and February 14, 2014 things around the Black Sea are going to be pretty dicey. I recommend skipping the Olympics altogether. 
