Russian President Vladimir Putin. Credit:AFP Sochi is a bold gamble by the Russian President: a Winter Games in his country's balmy summer resort, a close neighbour to its most volatile and violent region, all to show the world (and his own people) that, 25 years after the end of the Cold War, Russia is once again a global heavyweight. In Putin's own words, there is a ''psychological aspect'' to the event. ''After the collapse of the Soviet Union, after the dark and, let us be honest, bloody events in the Caucasus, the public attitude in Russia became very negative and pessimistic. We have to pull ourselves together and realise that we can deliver large-scale projects on time and with high standards.'' These have been dubbed ''Putin's Games''. He has taken a personal interest and, as with Russia, they have benefited from his strengths and suffered from his flaws. But whatever else they might be suffering, these Olympics aren't suffering from a lack of money. The generally-cited pricetag is a staggering $51 billion - more than any previous Games, summer or winter, and eight times the cost of Vancouver 2010.

This estimate was made by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, though he later revised it down, saying the original number included infrastructure that would have been needed anyway. Putin, in an interview with the world's media last week at his most cool and poker-faced, put the figure at just 214 billion roubles, or about $7 billion. The rest of the money, he said, was spent on local improvements such as transport infrastructure, and on turning Sochi into a modern holiday resort. There is no doubt that Sochi has been transformed utterly - with new roads, a train station, hotels and nearly a dozen new sports arenas. A few contractors had bid low then found their costs mounting, Putin said, due to the special challenges of alpine construction. ''This price increase, it is sometimes due to contractor's deliberate acts, and sometimes it is due to the fact that the professional valuation of necessary investments, especially in mountain conditions, for a mountain cluster, are not efficient enough.'' That's one theory. According to others, up to half of the entire cost of the Olympics has been diverted into corruption, siphoned off by officials and contractors with links to the government. There are several curiously expensive projects. One 50-kilometre rail and road connection between Sochi and the ski slopes cost $8.7 billion. Russia's Esquire magazine calculated that would pay to cover the road with a 1 centimetre layer of Beluga caviar. The speed-skating rink went seven times over its budget, and the main Sochi stadium, according to one estimate, cost almost three times any other stadium in the world. The ski jump was six times over budget, a year behind schedule, and the project's main shareholder fled the country and claimed someone tried to poison him.

Putin rival Boris Nemtsov claims to have documented evidence that $30 billion of the Olympic money went into the bank accounts of officials and businessmen. In an ''expert report'' published last year, Nemtsov and his co-author called Sochi 2014 ''an unprecedented scam involving both representatives of Putin's government and oligarchs close to the establishment''. ''The Sochi Olympics have highlighted the main flaws of Putin's system in a nutshell: lawlessness, corruption, high-handedness, cronyism, incompetence, and irresponsibility,'' they wrote. Putin, however, denied there were any ''serious corruption instances''. No one who made such claims had any proof, he said. ''If anyone has such information, give it to us, please,'' he said. ''But so far there was nothing.'' This may come as news to Russian businessman Valery Morozov, who fled to Britain after alleging rampant corruption in Sochi.

''You have to pay, there is no way out,'' he told the US ABC News, claiming he made regular cash deliveries of tens of millions of roubles to officials. He said he has now received death threats, including one saying he would be ''drowned in blood''. And prominent anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny has compiled a report dubbed the ''Encyclopaedia of Spending'', in which he identified cost-inflated projects and linked purportedly private investors to the federal government. At least a corrupt Games wouldn't hurt anyone, apart from the Russian taxpayers. But there is no doubt that Sochi is a target for Chechen rebels. In December, two suicide bombing attacks on public transport in Volgograd killed 34 people and were seen as a symbolic threat to Sochi, 700 kilometres away.

Chechen warlord and self-styled ''Emir of the Caucasus'' Doku Umarov has issued a specific threat via video, saying: ''We as the mujahideen must not allow [the Olympics] to happen by any means possible. I call on each of you … to do your utmost to prevent these satanic dances on our ancestors' bones.'' Russian police have handed out leaflets in Sochi warning of three ''black widow'' suicide bombers. One of them, the 22-year-old widow of an Islamic militant, was at large in Sochi, the police letter said, according to Associated Press. The athletes are nervous. A US speed skater told Associated Press he intended to ''stay in the bubble'', just shuttling between the venue and his hotel, ''and that's it''. Another teammate said she and others were worried for their parents and friends. ''They're going to be normal tourists. I'm scared for them,'' she said. The family of a US skier told National Public Radio they would miss the Games for the first time since 2006 - partly because of the cost and the uncertainty of travel to Russia, but also because of the terrorism threat. However, all modern major sporting events have to deal with terrorism - and the fact that the previous strike was at Volgograd, rather than Sochi, is seen by some as a good sign.

Security in Sochi is incredibly tight - drones patrol the skies, patrol boats the sea. More than 50,000 police and soldiers are on duty. Garlic-picking in the nearby woods has been banned. The London Daily Telegraph's Moscow correspondent compared Sochi's train station to the entrance to a military installation, complete with X-ray, metal detector and document check. Organising committee chief Dmitry Chernyshenko said this week Sochi was the ''most secure venue at the moment on the planet''. Even Steven Seagal has weighed in. ''The chances of any of these suicide bombers actually being able to pull it off are extremely remote,'' the former martial arts movie star turned security expert said. But for non-heterosexual athletes and visitors, terrorists aren't the only concern. A new Russian law has made it illegal to ''promote homosexuality'' to children. It is loosely worded, and could be easily interpreted to make any kind of public gay rights event or statement impossible. Gay rights campaigners responded to the law by calling for a boycott of the Games, and the issue has not gone away. Putin said the law was intended to prevent the ''propaganda of paedophilia and homosexuality'' among children. He had no problem with successful gay people such as Elton John, he said, and he was ''on friendly terms with some of them''. IOC president Thomas Bach said athletes could call for equality in press conferences, but could not make political statements while competing or being awarded a medal.

However, Chernyshenko went further, saying anyone who wanted to protest against the law would have to go to a special ''protest zone'' kilometres outside the Olympic Village. This week 52 Olympians, including 12 Australians (Jana Pittman among them, who will compete in Sochi in the bobsleigh) signed up to a ''principle six'' campaign, named after the clause in the Olympic charter that guarantees non-discrimination, calling for the laws to be removed. The issue has made for uncomfortable diplomacy. British Prime Minister David Cameron will not attend the Games - something local gay rights activists had called for - but Cameron's spokesman said it was just a scheduling matter, not a political boycott. And US President Barack Obama deliberately sent an Olympic delegation including several openly gay sports figures. Feisty tennis star Billie Jean King is one - she told The Colbert Report that she ''probably won't protest, but if the media asks me a question, I'm gonna answer it''. Asked if she would risk jail to say something about gay rights, she said ''well, I'll take that chance''. The situation was hardly calmed on Monday when the mayor of Sochi told the BBC there were no gay people living in the city (prompting several international reporters to spend an entertaining evening at one of the local gay bars, where they interviewed local drag queen ''Miss Zhu-Zha'').