The Times (Great Britain): "Putin's games"
The candidates may have barely announced that they are entering the contest, or drafted their manifestos, yet the victor of the race to be next mayor of Sochi is already pretty much in the bag.
The civic-minded candidates eager to run the Black Sea resort that will host the 2014 Winter Olympics are likely to include Andrei Lugovoy, the former KGB officer wanted in Britain for the murder of the dissident Alexander Litvinenko. Already on the ballot is Alexander Lebedev, also formerly of the KGB, now the billionaire owner of the London Evening Standard.
But Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, is committed to making the Sochi Games a showcase for his new, post-Soviet Russia ("problems will not be permitted", he warned last month). His interest is piqued not just by the lucrative Olympic building contracts that Sochi's new mayor could funnel towards Kremlin-friendly oligarchs, but also because Sochi is where he basks bare-chested when unwinding at his summer dacha.
Any candidate standing for office in Sochi on April 26 will be campaigning not to be mayor of the city that will host Russia's most prestigious event since the Moscow Olympics in 1980, but to be another of Mr Putin's playthings; a puppet whose strings are twisted by a fist in the Kremlin.
Just as all roads once led to Rome, all power in Russia today leads to Vladimir Putin. He cynically annointed Dmitri Medvedev to be his successor as President, and Mr Medvedev repays his patron with loyalty while he keeps his master's seat warm. Mr Putin has been President of Russia by being President. He has been President of Russia by being Prime Minister. Why not also be President of Russia by being mayor of Sochi?
