Introduction
In 2013 Russia was busy preparing to host the Winter Olympic Games in
Sochi in February 2014. The decision to hold the games in Sochi was con-
troversial. The city is located in direct proximity to the North Caucasus—
a region that has been engulfed in unrest and insurgency since 1991.
Numerous security concerns haunted the preparation for the games as
Doku Umarov, leader of the Caucasus Emirate—designated in Russia as a
terrorist organization—urged his followers to attack the site of the games
to prevent the Olympics from taking place. Umarov called for the peoples
of the North Caucasus to boycott the Olympics that would demonstrate
President Putin’s glory in Sochi—a site at which Russia had exterminated
a number of Caucasus ethnicities throughout history.1
Despite Putin’s assurances that Sochi was perfectly safe, panic and fear
set in as a series of terrorist attacks took place in the southern Russian city
of Volgograd just weeks before the opening of the games. On October 21,
in a suicide bombing of a public bus, six people were killed and 37 injured.
On December 29 another suicide bombing claimed the lives of 18 people;
another 44 were injured. The next day, on December 30, ten people were
killed and 23 injured in a third suicide terrorist attack. These attacks contin-
ued the string of suicide bombings that had been staged by members of the
Caucasus Emirate across Russia for years. The attacks taking place on the
verge of the Olympics turned out to be among the more severe terrorist
attacks of the last few years. Vilayat Dagestan, a division of the Caucasus
Emirate, claimed responsibility for the attacks and warned that the
group was prepared to carry out more attacks during the
Olympics.2
After
this, international Olympic committees received electronic
threats.3
