Las Vegas Sun

April 23, 2024

Khalid Tlif, a resident of the Bolshoi Kichmai village near Sochi, Russia, points toward a monument to his Circassian ancestors killed by czarist armies in the Caucasus wars of the 19th century on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2014. Circassians, a Muslim ethnic group native to these lands that Putin chose for his Olympic project, were massacred and exiled by czarist troops, persecuted under Stalin and largely ignored in the run-up to the Sochi Games.

Angela Charlton / Associated Press

Khalid Tlif, a resident of the Bolshoi Kichmai village near Sochi, Russia, points toward a monument to his Circassian ancestors killed by czarist armies in the Caucasus wars of the 19th century on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2014. Circassians, a Muslim ethnic group native to these lands that Putin chose for his Olympic project, were massacred and exiled by czarist troops, persecuted under Stalin and largely ignored in the run-up to the Sochi Games.