Sochi on security clampdown

Russia deploys biggest patrol force in history of Olympics

Russia launched the largest security operation in Olympic history on Tuesday with one month to go before President Vladimir Putin opens the Winter Games in Sochi amid renewed fears of suicide bombings.

Army soldiers manning armored vehicles and navy officers patrolling the Black Sea will join a 37,000-strong contingent overseeing the Feb 7-23 sports extravaganza that will spotlight Putin's 14-year rule.

The prestige project - often referred to as the "Putin Games" and costing some $50 billion - has already been blighted by snubs from Western leaders upset with what they see as Kremlin-backed discrimination against gays and the infringement of many other rights.

Railway station and trolleybus blasts that killed 34 in Volgograd last month meanwhile revived fears that Islamists from the nearby Caucasus will seek to wreak havoc on the event as the world watches.

Putin responded to mounting diplomatic pressure over the weekend by easing the terms of a tough decree banning all forms of political protest in Sochi.

And Russia's answer to the threat of terror was expected to be unveiled on Tuesday when the Federal Security Service takes charge of a security clampdown.

"Starting Jan 7, all divisions responsible for ensuring the guests' security at the Games are being put on combat alert," Emergency Situations Minister Vladimir Puchkov said.

"Every facility will be put under protection and a space-based monitoring system will be launched."

Additional measures deployed down the line will let the FSB monitor mobile phone and e-mail traffic while obliging all foreign visitors to register online.

Putin brought Russia's first post-Soviet Games to the port city against long odds in 2007 by personally telling Olympic chiefs in Guatemala that he would stage the best festivities they had yet seen.

The mission has been largely accomplished despite protests about the Games' environmental impact and reports of migrant workers being employed at illegally low wages and housed in inhumane conditions.

But Putin has been unable to duck the indignity of leaders from most big European nations and the United States snubbing the opening ceremony because of Russia's new "homosexual propaganda" ban.

Washington will instead send a delegation featuring such openly gay and lesbian stars as Olympic figure skating champion Brian Boitano and tennis legend Billie Jean King.

"The US delegation to the Olympic Games represents the diversity that is the United States," US National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden pointedly remarked.

Russian Olympic Committee chief Alexander Zhukov brushed off the absences as trivialities that "in no way affect the Olympic Games".

Putin did, however, bow to the International Olympic Committee on Saturday by partially reversing a blanket ban on protests in Sochi.

Terror threat

Security became an even bigger priority over the summer when a Russian Islamist vowed to unleash a campaign of terror against civilians that undermined Putin and kept all Sochi visitors at bay.

The deadly seriousness of the issue became ever more apparent with the twin December bombings on the million-strong southern city of Volgograd - a strike for which no one has claimed responsibility but that Russian media linked to Caucasus militants.

Putin called the attacks an "abomination" and assured he would "fight against terrorists until their total destruction".

But Moscow's most wanted man, the Chechen insurgent leader Doku Umarov, has urged militants who want to carve an Islamic state in Russia's south to use "maximum force" to prevent the Games going ahead.

AFP-Reuters