Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday chaired a meeting on the preparation for the 2014 Olympics in Sochi. He effectively presented private business with an ultimatum: start financing Olympic facilities or surrender them to the state. Also, as our special correspondent ANDREI KOLESNIKOV reports, he was trying to find out, without success, where the displaced Sochi inhabitants would live.
The meeting took place at RIA Novosti building, which will house the Olympics's information centre. Already there is a lot of information, but although it is a unified centre, the information is often conflicting.
Before the Prime Minister arrived, the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee and the company Rosneft signed a $180 million sponsorship contract in the "oil" category. All the top Olympic Games sponsors have been divided into categories in which "oil" takes pride of place, along with gas, of course. "How wonderful, earning $180 million in one minute," enthused Deputy Prime Minister and member of the Physical Fitness, Sport and Olympic Preparation Council, Alexander Zhukov, emerging from the signing ceremony.
"Only one problem left, I suggested, how to spend it?"
"Never had any problems there," Alexander Zhukov shot back.
We were joined by Igor Levitin, Chairman of the Table Tennis Federation, and then by Vladimir Lukin, President of the Russian Paralympic Committee, who said that he had the moral right to chair the Committee although he admitted to having had initial doubts.
"I have had poor eyesight since childhood, he explained. And I am a little hard of hearing. And my muscles, frankly, are not what they used to be".
However, Mr Lukin is active not only as the head of the Paralympic Committee. The signs are that what makes him an equal among equals in the paralympic movement also gives him confidence in his job of the Russian President's ombudsman:
"If you speak too loud (about human rights - A.K.) they feel offended, if you speak too quietly - they won't hear you," he confessed. So you have to be diplomatic".
The head of the Organizing Committee for the preparation of the Olympics, Dmitry Chernyshenko, who was to meet the Prime Minister at the entrance to RIA Novosti news agency, told me that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was jittery in connection with the financial crisis.
"We tell them that everything will be OK," Mr Chernyshenko added cheerfully. "But the moment of truth of course will come when the IOC inspects us in May this year."
The materials handed out to the participants in the conference had the date, May 2009 in the schedule of other IOC visits marked in red, while several other dates were pale blue ("They are nervous", the head of Interros, Vladimir Potanin, commented looking at the red-letter day on the Olympic calendar which could more appropriately be called the day of reckoning).
Before the start of the Conference Vladimir Putin asked the journalists from Sochi how the preparation for the Olympics was going. It was part of the Sochi-Moscow TV link. On one side was Vladimir Putin and on the other - 15-20 Sochi journalists. As one might have expected, they were all anxious to see the Olympics in their native city succeed and they came down like a tonne of bricks on anyone who tried to question that the preparation for the Olympics was in full swing. If Mr Putin hoped to start getting objective information as he was approaching the conference hall he was in for a disappointment. There could be no disinterested viewers on the other side of the TV link.
"We would like to ask you for a favour," a journalist from a Sochi newspaper popped up, "come to us more frequently and see how construction is going, how sport facilities are springing up one after another. Then the Moscow press will not carry speculations about our Olympics. I sometimes read the Internet and I think it's all speculation".
He told the Prime Minister that preparation for the Olympics was going full steam ahead and was meeting with no obstacles (in other words, even the inhabitants of the Imereti Valley had resigned to being deprived of their land in favour of the world sport movement). During the meeting Vladimir Putin, in the presence of the journalists, was uttering words which, coming from him, had a magic ring: the preparation for the Olympics was moving in a positive way and the "journalists sitting in Sochi are confirming it" (Good luck trying not to confirm it).
"We understand," the Prime Minister said, "that the private sector and the private investors who intend to assume the responsibility for building several sports facilities are up against heavy odds. We understand everything, we are ready to help. These projects are commercially lucrative. You should start funding them or else give them up."
That sentence came as a surprise, especially after the lulling TV link with the Sochi journalists. One wonders who it was addressed to. I for one immediately looked at Mr Potanin who was listening to the Prime Minister with the same poker face as several seconds ago, which rather betrayed his feelings than hid them. Unfortunately I saw no other private investors at the conference.
Anyway, the great sporting feast the Government was preparing for its people should not be marred by a single tear of an owner of land or a flat which would be erased by the Olympic highway. That topic was the subject of a lot of comments.
At the end of his introductory remarks the Prime Minister recalled the doping scandal at the World Biathlon Championship when three Russian athletes were disqualified, and suggested that important lessons should be drawn from it. "If necessary we can think about tougher measures," he said. Besides, almost nothing has been done on insuring athletes (insuring is certainly necessary because doping is merciless on athletes - A.K.). "What's been done? I haven't heard anything about it lately."
The Regional Development Minister, Viktor Basargin, said that the "forecast of overall spending on the construction of Olympic facilities is currently 473 billion roubles", that "104 facilities are being designed" and "three of them have already been completed". The last figure somehow paled by comparison with the preceding figures.
The Minister said that "there have been suggestions to cut funding by 33 billion roubles" in connection with the overall crisis. The money will be redistributed among other budget items, Vice Premier in charge of the preparation for the Olympics, Dmitry Kozak, explained later.
"The needs of Olympstroi are covered with leftovers from last year."
It is good that Sochi journalists hear about it only now along with the Moscow journalists. Otherwise their faces wouldn't have been so cheerful when they talked with Vladimir Putin.
Meanwhile Viktor Basargin was enthusiastically telling his listeners not about how the facilities would be built (actually, they were not even on the drawing boards yet) but how they would be used after the Olympics. The skating centre would be turned into an exhibition hall and the short track into a trade and entertainment centre. One thing was still unclear after his speech: why would the bobsleigh track remain just that, a bobsleigh track? Later it sank into me that it would be very difficult to convert it into anything else. Having said that, it might still be turned into an aquapark with roller-coaster. But first it had to be built.
It was announced that the "Sochi, a Hospitable City" programme was being finalised. The Olympic organisers had their job cut out to complete that programme.
After the journalists left, the meeting continued for about an hour. After the conference Vladimir Putin visited RIA Novosti and Russia Today TV company. He started on the guided tour without much enthusiasm but ended up pleasantly surprised by the ultra-modern way in which both offices were run. Meanwhile the participants in the meeting were giving a press conference, somewhat reluctantly sharing with the journalists what they had heard from Vladimir Putin.
When I asked Vladimir Potanin, the head of Interros, whether the Prime Minister was addressing him when he said that private investors had either to start funding the facilities or give them back to the state, he dodged the question. Another member in the conference said that even if it was addressed to him, it was not to him alone. After all, Mr Potanin started building ahead of others and although his company's activities were recently suspended by the auditing agencies (he claims they have lifted the ban already), it was still ahead of all IOC construction schedules.
Most probably Mr Putin had in mind the company Basel, which also is in charge of many Olympic facilities and investment committees, as Mr Kozak told the meeting. From Kommersant's information, Oleg Deripaska has been given until March 1 to decide what to do with these commitments.
"The thing is, Mr Potanin said, that nobody wants to be the first to refuse to build something in Sochi; that is a problem for any of us."
I gathered that it was not only a psychological problem.
One participant in the meeting added that a critical point occurred when the Prime Minister asked where the new apartment houses would be built for those whose houses were slated for demolition.
"You will have to move 4,000 people from every apartment block, what will you do with them?" Mr Putin asked the Mayor of Sochi and the Governor of the Krasnodar Territory.
They replied that there was a programme in place to build cottages, but then admitted that it applied to those who have their own houses. Eventually the blame was put on those who were not present at the meeting, including railwaymen who, as the meeting decided, would have to build housing for those Sochi inhabitants whose homes would be wiped off the face of the earth by a new railway branch. "In short, at the current stage land is being allocated, right?" Mr Putin asked and nobody dared to argue with that.
The President of the Olympic Committee, Leonid Tyagachyov, was perhaps the only person who felt encouraged by the results of the meeting. ("Very much like Soviet bureaucrats meeting. Sitting at the table, reporting on how much money has been used, what is being projected and you still cannot figure out what is being projected. Of the three facilities said to be completed there are some that I am in charge of and actually they have not been completed," Mr Potanin said before leaving).
Mr Tyagachyov explained that his Committee was not authorised to sign a single contract with the sponsors independently. Everything had to be done through the Organising Committee.
"We will be on a lean diet until 2014," he fumed. And what if the athletes need additional food? Who will provide it? It was clear that no one but Leonid Tyagachyov could do it. "And you know what Putin said? ‘We will help you, we will solve all the problems'," Leonid Tyagachyov said triumphantly casting a stern look at Dmitry Chernyshenko, who was passing by on his way to the press conference.
I thought he said it loudly so that the man could hear him.