Tag: Sochi

The success of the World Youth Festival is driving the West into agony

Foreign delegations from all over the world are arriving at the World Youth Festival in Sochi. On March 1, excursion programs for journalists start on the federal territory of Sirius and the first press conferences with experts will begin.

The first week of the festival will be devoted to discussions, meetings, cultural and sports programs. It will take place in the City of World Evolution. Then the participants get acquainted with the country, its cultural situation, historical heritage, national diversity of people and their traditions, unique nature and economic potential.

Meanwhile, the Western mainstream media have started spreading information discrediting the Forum organizers. For example, it says selection of volunteers was made unfairly, and many “outstanding” young people were refused.

But it is worth highlighting that the Festival is the event of an international scale, comparable to the Expo held in Dubai in 2021. No doubts. that events of this level involve serious selection and require qualifications and motivation from volunteers. To become a volunteer, it is also required to go through the appropriate procedures and pass tests. So far, the organizers attracted both Russian and foreign citizens aged 18 to 35 years, as well as very young volunteers from 14 to 17 years old to work at certain sites. In total, 5 thousand volunteers work at the Forum.

Selection also takes place among foreign delegations. Delegations from 180 countries have already arrived at the Forum, the most representative of them being from India, registering 360 people.

Meanwhile, the head of Rosmolodezh reported that some delegations and volunteers were not released from the airports of their countries when they talked about the purpose of their visit to Russia.

“We have a huge number of young people all over the world… Many of them faced some kind of pressure from their countries, not always a friendly attitude, but this did not stop the guys at all, everyone arrived, everyone is here, everyone is open and ready for friendship, communication,” Razuvaeva told reporters.

The reaction of Western media and officials is quite predictable. Failing attempts to isolate Russia with sanctions restrictions and exclude it from all leading international associations are driving European and American leaders into agony.

Moreover, the West is gradually realizing that the vector of the International Community is shifting. A recent article published in the Financial Times that Davos is no longer in the economic center of the world has caused heated discussion in the Western society. Today, Dubai, Shanghai, Moscow are becoming new world’s centers..

Meanwhile, Russia remains open to international cooperation and accepts thousands of proposals from foreign delegations at the Forum is one more prove of this.

March 2, 2024
Sochi 2014: Turkish Special Forces seize man suspected of making bomb threat on plane

Turkish F16

Officials: ‘Air pirate’ claims bomb on board, tries to have plane go to Sochi

According to CNN, a passenger announced Friday “that there was a bomb on board” his plane and wanted it diverted to Sochi — the Russian city hosting the Winter Olympics amid terrorism fears — Turkish officials said.

Rather than abide by the request, the Pegasus Airlines’ crew sent a hijacking alert that Turkey’s Air Force Control Center received at 5:20 p.m. (10:20 a.m. ET), Turkey’s semiofficial Anadolu news agency reported.

About 20 minutes later, the same report claimed two F-16 fighter jets scrambled to intercept the Boeing 737-800 and escort it over the Black Sea.

Eventually, the airliner landed safely at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport, where video shot soon thereafter showed police and security officials converging on it.

Istanbul’s governor tweeted around 10 p.m. that “the air pirate has been neutralized” and all other passengers “disembarked from the plane without any problems.” Special forces who boarded the plane took him into custody “in a swift operation” without finding a “bomb on him,” Gov. Huseyin Avni Mutlu later told reporters.

“The operation is complete,” the governor said.

Mutlu said that the suspect — who never made it into the cockpit and at one point apparently thought the aircraft was destined for Sochi — “didn’t seem to have consumed alcohol, (but) he may have used some other substances.” He’d brought a carry-on bag with personal electronics and other items onto the Pegasus plane, according to the governor.

The incident came at a tense time given the various threats surrounding the Winter Games, which kicked off in earnest Friday night with its opening ceremony.

Russian security forces have cracked down in recent weeks on suspected militants in the restive North Caucasus republic of Dagestan — which is located on the other side of the Caucasus Mountains from Sochi — and elsewhere in recent weeks after twin suicide bombings in the city of Volgograd in December.

There have also been concerns specifically about explosives-laden airlines. U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul said Wednesday night that the his nation’s Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin to airlines flying into Russia warning that explosive materials could be concealed in toothpaste or cosmetic tubes.

Airlines warned of possible toothpaste tube bombs

Official: Suspect is Ukrainian

The flight started in Kharkov in Ukraine, and was headed to Istanbul, according to the Transportation Ministry.

While it was in air, “one of the passengers said that there was a bomb on board and asked the plane to not land in Sabiha Gokcen but rather to land in Sochi,” Transportation Ministry official Habip Soluk said on CNNTurk.

The man said the bomb was in the baggage hold, a Transportation Ministry official said.

The aircraft ended up touching down at the Turkish airport at at 6:04 p.m., according to Anadolu, at which point it was moved to a safe zone on the tarmac.

Cihan News Agency of Turkey published a photograph it claimed came from inside the plane showing a man standing in a number 11 sports jersey with empty seats around him and two people in uniform.

Turkish officials have not confirmed that this photograph is from inside the Pegasus airliner or that the man at the center of it is the alleged hijacker.

The Ukrainian foreign ministry issued a statement identifying the suspect as one of its citizens, something that Soluk also said was the case. The Ukrainian ministry said no explosives or guns were found aboard the plane and that the suspect “voluntarily turned himself into police.”

Mutlu, Istanbul’s governor, offered a different take on how the alleged hijacker was detained.

“We had to use force because we were trying to persuade him and he wasn’t persuaded,” said Mutlu, adding Turkish authorities did not use guns and that the suspect suffered “a light injury.”

The suspect never said anything about Circassians — the residents in the volatile region around the North Caucasus mountains — or having lived in the region, according to the governor.

CNN’s Gul Tuysuz reported from Turkey, and Greg Botelho reported and wrote from Atlanta. Journalist Victoria Butenko contributed from Kiev, Ukraine, while CNN’s Michael Martinez contributed from Los Angeles.

Contributed By Tolga Cakir

February 8, 2014
Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics: The Circassians Cry Genocide

Sochi, the site for the 2014 winter Olympics, just happens to be where the russians dispossessed an entire nation exactly 150 years earlier. the survivors’ descendants say it was genocide—and now they’re demanding justice.

1940: Circassian guards at the home of collaborationist Gen. Maxime Weygand. (Margaret Bourke-White / Time & Life Pictures-Getty Images)

Vladimir Putin may think he has trouble enough on Moscow’s streets without worrying about demonstrators outside the country. If so, perhaps he should think again. This week in Istanbul, New York, Brussels, and other world cities, protesters are taking aim at his most cherished project: the 2014 Winter Olympics. Although the facilities at the Caucasus Mountains resort of Sochi are already winning enthusiastic praise from visiting skiers, thousands of angry activists are determined to spoil Putin’s party.

The marchers are Circassians, the descendants of a people who once had their own country on the shores of the Black Sea, between Crimea and the modern-day Republic of Georgia. They lost it a century and a half ago to a brutal campaign by the imperial Russian army to seize the entire Caucasus region. The Circassians resisted for four decades until May 21, 1864, when they finally surrendered and were expelled from the land of their fathers. Until recently their descendants marked the date only with quiet remembrance ceremonies. But in 2007 the International Olympic Committee accepted Russia’s bid to hold the 2014 Games at Sochi—the very place where the Circassians surrendered in 1864. Since then, May 21 has become a day of rage.

“How would you feel—how would the Russians feel, if athletes came from all over the world to ski or ice-skate on the graves of their ancestors—and [the athletes] did not even know they were doing it?” demands Danyal Merza. Last May 21, the 29-year-old telephone technician, along with two other ethnic Circassians, his friends Clara and Allan Kadkoy, traveled from their homes in New Jersey all the way to Turkey, where most members of the Circassian diaspora now live. The four of us ended up near the head of a chanting crowd of thousands of Circassians. The human wave, topped by a foam of anti-Sochi banners, poured down Istanbul’s Istiklal Street before breaking against a triple line of police who stood with truncheons and tear gas outside the Russian consulate.

Speaking into a bullhorn, Merza squared his shoulders and shouted the group’s demands in English: no Sochi Olympics, recognition of the Circassian genocide, and the right to move back to the homeland the Russians seized a century and a half ago. His listeners roared their approval in Turkish, and their voices resounded from the steep houses on either side: “We don’t want Olympics in Sochi!” Allan pumped his fist and shouted along with them. “It’s the first time I’ve chanted without knowing what the words mean,” he told me afterward. His wife was similarly transported. “I could never imagine feeling like this,” she said. “We might not speak Turkish, but we’re all saying the same thing in different languages.”

more: Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics: The Circassians Cry Genocide – The Daily Beast.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/05/20/sochi-2014-winter-olympics-the-circassians-cry-genocide.html

May 22, 2012
Western Armenians demand Turkey’s recognition of Genocide

PanARMENIAN.Net – On June 25, Moscow hosted Western Armenians’ convention, with 100 delegates from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rostov, Sochi, Adler, Krasnodar, Omsk, Petrozavodsk, Vladivostok, Crimea and Abkhazia attending.

39 Russian delegates to participate in The Third Congress of Western Armenians due December 2011 in Paris were selected during the convention, Hyusisapayl Moscow-based newspaper reported.

“National Council of Western Armenians will defend the legal rights of the descendants of Western Armenians in international organizations, negotiate with Turkish authorities and other interested parties to achieve Turkey’s recognition of Armenian Genocide as well as condemnation of 1915 massacres and compensation of moral, material and territorial damages,” the statement issued during the convention stressed.

via Western Armenians demand Turkey’s recognition of Genocide – PanARMENIAN.Net.

June 27, 2011