It’s where all the thank you’s to FIFA are coming from. The best is, of course, Vladimir Putin’s, especially the part where he talks about soccer promoting fair play.
The Cup, by the way, is, by some estimates, projected to cost $50 billion. $50 billion, people! I know what you’re all going to say, my apologist commenters, but that is a bonkers amount of money.
The Moscow Diaries 
Then why do you leave the comments open, or even post this at all? 😉
Ah, the beauty of free speech. Just because I can predict what you’re going to say, doesn’t mean you can’t say. Nor does it mean I agree, or that this blog exists to cater to your position. But you knew that. So why did you comment?
You said you “know” what you’re going to say, which is infinitely stronger than you “can predict”. Unless, perhaps, you believe that posting this will alter the time-space continuum such that what you know we will say becomes something different and merely predictable but know knowable in advance.
But anyhow, I posted my opinion to this Siberian Light post.
In response to your specific claim that $50 billion is a “bonkers amount of money”, much of it will be in infrastructure, on which Russia in any case intends to be spend around $1,000 billion in the next decade. So $50 billion is rather modest in comparison.
Related and funny image that’s been going around: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3971799/22209.png
Putin’s intonation sounded a little different here. It’s probably because the only other times I’ve heard him speak English were in more prepared speeches, and he probably didn’t have time to rehearse this one.
same here in Brazil, my friend, same here…..
Leo Messi can talk about fair play, not putin.
It’s worth noting that Russia needs to spend $50bn to get $12bn worth of infrastructure.
Speaking of that, how’re those Trillion-dollar schools and roads in Iraq coming along?
The weblog of a Moscow-based journalist is probably not the best forum in which to enquire as to the progress of reconstruction efforts in Iraq. I doubt you’ll find the answer here.
We might find it on Wikileaks which the neocon crazies and other authoritarians of like persuasion are doing their best to shut down. Go Western freedom!