Word: sochi
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...week, a second opportunity to whip up national hysteria came when Russia defeated Canada to win ice hockey's World Championship for the first time since 1993. And Putin continues to pour funds into his pet project of holding the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian Black Sea resort Sochi...
Those who live in Nizhneimeretinskaya Bukhta felt elated too: they expected good business. The letdown came in January, when the state introduced the "Olympic law" laying out the process governing land confiscation for the Sochi Olympics. In contravention of the provisions of Russia's Land Code, the law stipulates that Sochi confiscation disputes would be resolved in court under abridged procedures that allow the state alone to set the price...
...build more than 200 Olympic projects, some of them in Nizhneimeretinskaya Bukhta. The state has budgeted about $3.5 million to buy up the land. That works out to an average of $50 per 1,076 sq. ft. (100 sq m) or sotka, Russia's standard unit of land. But Sochi's successful Olympic bid has boosted Sochi land prices fivefold since last July; in April, a sotka in the area was on sale in a price range of $100,000 to $200,000. The Kovals figure they could have sold their four sotkas and the boarding house for $1.5 million...
...been living in Nizhneimeretinskaya Bukhta for six generations since 1911, when Czar Nicholas II granted land there to resettlers from Turkey. "Now, Putin is taking away what the Emperor gave our forefathers," says Inechkyan. He notes that the authorities promised to shift the bobsled track in the mountains above Sochi because of ecological concerns, "but they have no problem trampling upon human beings...
...alone. The Moscow city government and that of the Yekaterinburg region in the Urals are preparing legislation patterned on the law being applied around Sochi, in order to make it easier to appropriate land as the authorities see fit. In today's Russia, apparently you don't need an Olympic Games to find an excuse for confiscating property...