Paul Goble
Staunton, July 9 – Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Water Problems, says that the environmental devastation in and around Sochi as a result of construction for the 2014 Olympic Games not only is now "a forbidden theme” for the Russian media but in the time remaining is "impossible to stop.”
Consequently, he argues in an interview published this week it is "senseless to protest” what is going on there, all the more so since the destruction of the ecology of that region is only a drop in the bucket compared to the devastation of the Russian environment particularly during the last decade (www.argumenti.ru/society/n245/67419/).
But just how bad the situation really is, Danilov-Danilyan continues, is unknown even to the country’s top leaders. The reason? Over the last decade, he ...