In stark contrast to England, Russia appeared profoundly unqualified to host a monthlong tournament expected to draw well over three million spectators. For starters, Russia didn’t have a great soccer tradition; its team hadn’t even qualified to play in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, thanks to an embarrassing loss to Slovenia.
.. More important, it didn’t have adequate stadiums or other infrastructure, and since it was already going to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, there were serious questions about how it could afford to build what was required.
.. To most observers, Russia didn’t seem like a serious threat to England’s hopes, but Mr. Steele’s confidential sources told a very different story.
Mr. Putin, then serving a four-year term as prime minister, saw hosting the World Cup as a vital way to project his country’s power, and his own, around the world. He was determined, sources said, to win the bid at any cost.
.. Russian government officials and oligarchs close to Mr. Putin had been enlisted to push the effort, cutting shadowy gas deals with other countries in exchange for votes, offering expensive gifts of art to FIFA voters and even dispatching Roman Abramovich, the billionaire who owns the London-based Chelsea Football Club, to South Africa to pressure Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s president.
.. Multiple generations of FIFA administrators were brought down, accused of collectively taking hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes.
.. Court records from the case run into the thousands of pages, and prosecutors spent weeks laying out every tangled intricacy of their digging in a six-week criminal trial in federal court in Brooklyn late last year. But Russia, strangely, seems to have been completely absent from any of it.
.. An attempt by FIFA itself to audit the bid after the fact was stymied when it was discovered that a football foundation linked to Mr. Abramovich, Mr. Putin’s oligarch pal, destroyed the Russia bid team’s computers.
.. The country has somehow found a place at or near the center of nearly every geopolitical conspiracy, most of them considerably more insidious than where a quadrennial soccer tournament should be held.
.. On June 14, the Russian national soccer team will square off against Saudi Arabia in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium for the opening match of the 2018 World Cup. Lacking talent in midfield, a viable scoring threat, an organized defense or a well-regarded coach, the Russian squad hasn’t had any notable success since 2008 and qualified this time because host nations get an automatic spot.
Dmitry Medvedev: Corruption Video: Navalny
A New Keeper of Putin’s Secrets
Even before Russian President Vladimir Putin won reelection to another six-year term, there was growing speculation about how he intends to preserve his power and legacy after 2024. But with the nomination of Alexei Kudrin to the government’s central budgeting body, Putin’s long-term plan seems to be taking shape.
.. Putin’s nomination of former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin to chair the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation. The selection of Kudrin for this role calls to mind former President Boris Yeltsin’s own search for a successor who would preserve his legacy and protect his family and fortune.
.. Yeltsin had amassed around $15 million while in office, and he ultimately put his trust in Putin – a former KGB man – to protect his children and his money, and to keep him out of prison.
.. Dmitry Medvedev, keep his seat warm until he could return to the presidency in 2012. A far more competent placeholder would have been Sergei Ivanov, a former KGB general. But Ivanov is much taller than Putin, who, at any rate, had only achieved the rank of colonel. An obvious potential threat to Putin’s power, Ivanov was passed over,
.. Despite his years in office, Medvedev is still known more for his fancy ties and expensive watches than for his executive actions.
.. In 2011, Kudrin resigned as finance minister after publicly suggesting that Medvedev was an incompetent fool.
.. Kudrin’s nomination as Russia’s chief accountant matters because it will give him – and thereby Putin – more knowledge of corruption. And with that, Putin will be able to manipulate anyone who may have future designs on the presidency, perhaps with the goal of reinstalling Medvedev as a placeholder after 2024.
.. siloviki – former Soviet military and intelligence officers – who make up the bulk of his cabinet and account for the Kremlin’s unchecked power over Russian political life.
.. By championing Russia’s military-industrial complex, Putin can keep the siloviki occupied and on his side. To that end, he has reinstated the World War II victory parades that were discontinued under Yeltsin. The events now grow more breathtaking and grandiose with each passing year.
But recent reports suggest that Russia’s military readiness is more fiction than fact. The “invincible” missiles that Putin has touted have apparently crashed during tests, and are thus little more than militaristic props. One conclusion to draw from these failures is that someone in the Ministry of Defense is stealing. There is no other plausible excuse for failing to deliver the weapons Putin ordered.
.. a new study finds that Russia’s defense and intelligence ministries are among the state’s most corrupt institutions.
.. Kudrin has clearly been installed to ensure that the “trusted” security apparatus can actually be trusted.
.. current defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, is probably now in the Kremlin’s crosshairs.
.. Shoigu looks like a man in charge. But that poses a problem for Putin’s own claim to be the protector of the Russian nation. There can be only one brave leader who saves people from Siberian tigers and hang-glides with endangered Siberian white cranes.
.. Though Shoigu’s Siberian-Mongolian ancestry effectively disqualifies him from being elected by the country’s vast majority of ethnic Russians, Putin is not one to take chances.
.. If a rival from the security establishment were to assume the presidency, he could choose to build his own legacy, rather than honor Putin’s. It is up to Medvedev and Kudrin, the rare civilians in Putin’s inner circle, to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Behind the Scenes of Harvey Weinstein’s Arrest
Mr Weinstein’s attorney Ben Brafman further explained that he intends to file a Motion to Dismiss the charges as being legally flawed and not supported by credible evidence.
.. The detectives offered to move Evans to a safe location where she wouldn’t face threats.
.. Two police sources told me that they were angered that the office of the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, decided not pursue charges at the time. One investigator called the D.A.’s decision “corrupt.”
.. “I know how this has changed my life for the worse. How he took away my self-esteem and personal power. And knowing I can take it back, and stop him from doing that to another woman, I couldn’t let that go.”