You're reading: Financial Times: Soviet-age Olympic data dismays neighbours

“Authorities from at least two former Soviet republics that have long had strained relations with Moscow – Ukraine and Georgia – demanded corrections from organisers of the London Olympics after their cities were listed as ‘regions’ of Russia,” Roman Olearchyk wrote in a Financial Times report.

 

According to the report, about 30 such “blunders were made in the biographical data of athletes who, though representing Russia in the games, were born in neighbouring Ukraine, Georgia and other countries that were under Moscow’s control in the Soviet era.”


Russia had yet to explain the incidents, according to the report, which quotes experts describing the mistakes as “deliberate demonstrations of soft power by Moscow over nations it considers to be within its ‘sphere of influence.’”


Click here to read the report.