`Collaborators and traitors´: Russia goes to war with Winter Olympics ban
(The Guardian Russia)

The outraged Russian reaction to the IOC´s decision has been fuelled by comparisons with the great national triumph in the second world warOn sulphurous television chat shows this week, Russian athletes considering competing under a neutral flag at the upcoming Winter Olympics were compared to wartime collaborators and traitors. The second world war was evoked repeatedly. `Try telling them that the flag isn´t important,` wrote one Kremlin-friendly journalist on Twitter, alongside a photograph of Red Army soldiers lifting the Soviet flag above the Reichstag in 1945. Related: Proxy battles by the US and Russia are taking sport back to the 1930s | Richard Williams Related: Winter Olympics doping ban met with righteous anger in Russia Continue reading...