Inside Sochi News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Other events where the event itself becomes the reason for a lot of new construction, a lot of revitalization and the like, and we've certainly seen that here in sochi where a number of the hotels are new, the sporting venues obviously are new. the press center is new. so that's all had to be constructed in a fairly short period of time. >> we're hearing, of course, back here lots of scary, troublesome stories about explosive material in toothpaste tubes, black widows. what's your personal concern about sochi? >> about security at sochi? >> yes. >> listen, as the leader of the u.s. delegation,...

Little context, anytime you have one of these big international events, and unfortunately that includes olympics, security is an issue. it was an issue leading up into the london games, for example, and here because of its geographic proximity to an area that's actually in a war, that creates some other special security concerns. within the boundaries of sochi, within the so-called ring of steel, there's a lot of security, but, you know, once you have your credential, once you have your i.d.s and so forth, you can move around and get into the venues. >> does from your perspective from what you...

Taped conversation between two u.s. diplomats that happened to be in the ukraine at the time and were not complimentary to the eu somehow appeared on the web and were being pushed by the soviets. is the soviet union capable kind of as a final question, are they capable -- i'm sorry, the russians, you can tell, right? are the russians capable of protecting these olympics and keeping them safe? do they have the intelligence capability and do they have the manpower capability to make these safe? >> i'm going to hazard the estimation that yes, they do. they have put an awful lot of effort into thi...

Sochi. ivan watson joins us live. certainly back here lots of talk about security. does it affect the atmosphere there? >> well, there's a massive deployment, there's no question about it. you see police and uniformed officers everywhere, and let me just give you some numbers. some of the russian published estimates of the number of security forces deployed goes into the tens of thousands, and according to the russian organizing committee, there were 30,000 spectators in the olympic venues on saturday. so you might have nearly a one security officer for every spectator if we can trust some of ...

Different venues. however, security behind the scenes is undoubtedly a massive concern. i just spoke with the u.s. ambassador to moscow, mike mcfaul, and he said that this is a massive effort. the u.s. team here, the olympic team, is the biggest of all of them, of course, and he described not only a sochi-based operation, but a much bigger u.s. effort to ensure that no tragedy, nothing terrible can happen here, and to give a sense of how the anxiety is big here. he did say that after the olympics, after the final ceremony when it's all over, if nothing terrible happens, all of the security tea...