Sochi, Russia, home to the 2014 Winter Olympics, held elections yesterday to choose the leadership that will govern through the games. The Kremlin-backed candidate, Anatoly Pakhomov, took about 77% of the vote.
The principal challenger was Boris Nemtsov, a young reformer who was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Republic representing the closed city of Gorky (later renamed Nizhny Novgorod) in 1990. Nemtsov took a distant second 13 per cent of the vote and has promised a legal challenge.
President Dmitry Medvedev insisted this month that Russia “had, has, and will have democracy.” Headlines like these invite skepticism:
Russia: Opposition Charges Election Fraud in Future Olympic Host City
Russian mayor faces poll fraud case
Pro-Kremlin candidate wins Sochi mayoral poll amid claims of fraud
Activists decry Russia's latest case of ‘managed democracy'
Opposition Vows To Contest Ruling Party's Sochi Win
Sochi is about twenty miles up the Black Sea coast from the Republic of Georgia, with whom Russia fought the summer war of 2008, and less than 300 miles from Beslan, home to the 2004 school hostage crisis that killed at least 334, and Grozny, epicenter of the Chechen conflict that, by the most conservative estimates, killed 30,000 civilians.
Get your tickets early.
(See photos in the Russia Gallery and the Georgia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)
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