re: #251 Wendell Zurkowitz (slave to the waffle light)

…but aside from fashion, films and popular music, Russia is not really dependent on any outside nation. Putin knows that and is using that leverage to his full advantage.

The US sold out that advantage decades ago.

Don’t judge the rest of Russia by the high fliers in Moscow and narcissistic Putin’s Olympics posturing and horseback riding. There is deep poverty in Russia.

Olympic glitz masks poverty within Russia’s Sochi

SOCHI, Russia — A new $635 million highway on the outskirts of Sochi runs by a crumbling apartment block with a red “SOS!” banner on its roof.

“The residents of 5a Akatsy street have lived for years without running water or a sewage system. And construction for the 2014 Winter Games has made their lives more miserable: The highway has cut them off from the city center. Even their communal outhouse had to be torn down because it was found to be too close to the new road and ruled an eyesore.

“While state-run TV trains its cameras on luxury malls, sleek stadiums and high-speed train links, thousands of ordinary people in the Sochi area put up with poverty, squalor and environmental waste. Villagers live next to an illegal dump filled with Olympic construction waste, and family homes are sinking into the earth.”

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