The sorry state of the hotels the media are staying in at Sochi have themselves become a major story of the Sochi Olympics. It's a sad story because the hotels were probably fully funded, and it is likely that the extreme level of corruption innate in the workings of Russian government and business led to their current incomplete and dilapidated state.
What makes this story even more of a tragicomedy is how Russian officials have responded to these stories. The WSJ article on this, titled Russian Officials Fire Back, is quite peculiar.
First, Dmitry Kozak, the deputy prime minister in charge of Olympic preparations implied that foreign journalists are making the whole thing up out of bias against Russia. Not only that, but he has proof they are making up stories because they have surveillance video from the hotel rooms which show journalists doing things that would destroy the showers before they take pictures to post online. When asked directly about surveillance video (which he implied was aimed at the showers of the visiting media) he was pulled away by an aide who apparently realized that their boss was going down a path where he was admitting to much worse wrongdoing in order to cover up general incompetence.
In a later press conference, Kozak said something un-ironically that is quite scary.
"The realization of such a project is an enormous victory for the entire country," he said. "As we say in Russia, victors don't get blamed."
In the West there is also a saying, "Winners write the history books." But when it is said by a prospective winner they are admitting that they are being evil but will be able to cover up their misdeeds due to the lack of influence of the losers. Apparently in Russia, government officials still take the attitude that they won't be held accountable as long as they achieve certain primary goals.
And with the exception of Vladamir Putin's spokesman, who shows up at the end of the article, none of the officials quoted seem to worry about sounding like corrupt despots who think they can change reality just by lying enough.
If it is this bad when the world spotlight is shining brightly on Russia, it's scary to think about how corrupt and broken things are on a day to day basis.