The 2014 Sochi Olympic Games are on the horizon.  On February 7, the world will be looking on Russia to watch athletes clash in an attempt to win the ever coveted gold medals and overall glory to their home countries.

However, Russia has come under fire as of late due to an apparent looming terrorist threat.

Here’s a little bit of background.  In December, the Russian city of Volgograd was rocked by two suicide bombings, one in a train station on the 29 and another on a trolleybus on the 30, resulting in 34 deaths total.  A subgroup of the Russian network of insurgents, Caucasus Emirate, called Vilayat Dagestan, claimed responsibility for both bombings and followed up with a threat to execute an attack on the Olympic Games.

Naturally, this is causing Russia to boost security for the games and people, including myself, are concerned for the safety of the audience and athletes of the games. It’s even causing the NHL to consider pulling out of the games altogether.

Will Vilayat Dagestan actually execute an attack on the games?

After thinking it over and doing a little research, the threats to the games and the security measures being put into place create a double-edged sword.

On the bad edge, the games are awfully close to the Caucasus, where the Caucasus Emirate are fighting Russia for “independence”.  It’s seems like Russia is painting a giant red target on the games and taunting the insurgency at the same time screaming “Come and get it!”  Not to mention the potential that cells have possibly been put into place inside the staff of the games.

As extreme as that sounds, Russia is also refusing any outside help to monitor the games.  I get it, national pride and what not, but a little extra help never hurts, especially when it comes to dealing with a group that invaded a school in the town of Beslan and killed over 300 people, half of which were children.

However, on the good edge, I can’t help but have faith in Russia, if not primarily on the amount of money invested alone.

The Russian government invested fifty one billion dollars into the games.  I don’t know about anybody else, but if I invested that kind of money into something, I’d want to protect it.  And I doubt Russia would want to endanger its own citizens and athletes as well as it’s allys’.

There’s also the national pride that I mentioned earlier.  If an attack were to be successfully executed on the game, it would greatly damage Russia’s pride as well as any trust with other nations, and I doubt that they want that to happen.

So overall, I want to believe that the Olympics will go off without a hitch, but I still can’t help but feel a bit paranoid about it.  I guess that what comes with being a concerned human being.

Put my fears to rest, Russia.

By Alex Ostrowski