sochi

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With the Winter Olympics under way in Vancouver, the World Wildlife Fund is claiming that environmental concerns are going unheeded in the push to prepare Sochi to host the next Winter Games in 2014.
 
Whilst acknowledging an increase in the levels of public participation  in the preparations for the event, the WWF (Russia) said that nature reserves’ borders had been changed, access for nongovernmental groups had been curbed, and calls for closer monitoring of the environmental impact had gone unheeded.
 

As Russia prepares for the Winter Olympics of 2014, environmentalists are raising serious concerns about the potential impact on the local environment. President Medvedev, however, appears to be far more aware of environmental issues than his predecessor.The Winter Olympics are hugely important for Russia, for political and economic reasons. When assessing the potential environmental impact, western observers must bare in mind these other factors. Dmitry Medvedev stated at a meeting this week:
 

Thousands of tropical fish have died at a Russian airport after being held in customs in the summer heat. The state-run RIA Novosti news agency says that more than 4,000 fish worth £297,000 died in the Black Sea resort of Sochi after customs officials spent 15 hours clearing the cargo on Saturday. The fish had been shipped from China for Sochi Discovery World,the county's largest oceanarium, due to open this month. Amin Azzam, the oceanarium's director, said the loss was an "atrocity unseen anywhere else in the world".
 

Krasnaya Polyana, a resort near to the Black Sea city of Sochi, will be the venue for the 2014 winter Olympics. It has also been the venue, over the last few days, for a series of meetings of Russian parliamentarians, as President Medvedev has insisted that even during the summer holidays, the politicians should remain in regular contact.
 

The German chancellor is meet with the Russian President in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, on August 14th.
The Kremlin describes the meeting as a "bilateral summit", but as yet no agenda has been made available.
 
Medvedev has clearly identified to the world who he considers his country's "strategic partners" to be. Angela Merkel will surely be aware that whatever spin is put on this meeting by the European press, this should be viewed in the context of a bilateral partnership between Russia and Germany, with the EU dumped firmly on the sidelines.