Spectre of war threatens Putin’s Olympics

Russian retaliation to the Georgian army's major military offensive in South Ossetia threatens not only the prospects for a peaceful solution for the divided region, but also the Winter Olympic Games that Russia will host in Sochi in 2014. The Kremlin has sent tanks to help the many Russian citizens who live in this breakaway republic, but Vladimir Putin must know that a full-scale war in the Caucasus would seriously endanger a project very close to his heart.

Putin, a keen skier, has enjoyed many summer holidays in Sochi, a sunny but tacky beach resort, and was personally involved in securing the Olympic bid for Russia by travelling to Guatemala City to lobby the judges. But Sochi is only 15 miles away from Abkhazia, another disputed region. Abkhazia, which declared its independence from Georgia in 1992, is bolstered by large numbers of Russian troops.

The rising conflict in South Ossetia, and the political fallout between Moscow and Tbilisi, directly increases the threat of terrorism there. Only yesterday, a man and a woman were killed when a device exploded on a beach in Sochi, the second deadly bomb there in two weeks.

In July, amidst the political tension, three earlier bomb attacks in Abkhazia had left several dead. The companies who want to invest in Olympic infrastructure, like the proposed train link between Abkhazia and Sochi, are worried.

Security has not been the only concern standing between Putin and his dream Olympics. The committee's plans to construct the bobsleigh run, a railway station and an Olympic village in the beautiful untouched wilderness of Sochi National Park, home to 100 endangered species, provoked environmentalists' fury. Putin eventually agreed to move the site.

The environmentalists disrupted preparation for the 2014 games. The conflict with Georgia may end up destroying them.