By Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times

Russia has erected a “ring of steel” and the U.S. military is planning for evacuations, but the fact remains that Sochi, the site of next month’s Winter Olympics, is within striking distance of Dagestan and Chechnya — volatile regions that form a caldron for Islamic militants. …

“Sochi is easily the most threatened Olympic Games since Munich in 1972,” said Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University who has advised the CIA and U.S. military on counterterrorism.

The Olympics “will take place in a city bordering an already restive region and in a country where intelligence and security liaison with the West is problematical,” Mr. Hoffman said. “Even if the games themselves are secured, the threat of terrorism in other parts of Russia and the Caucasus cannot be dismissed, given last month’s back-to-back attacks in Volgograd. The potential, therefore, for terrorist incidents elsewhere to disrupt or otherwise mar the games cannot be prudently dismissed.”

On Monday, police in Sochi said they were searching for at least one “black widow,” a female suicide bomber who might have slipped past security surrounding the site of the Olympics, which open Feb. 7. Identified on wanted posters as Ruzanna Ibragimova, she is a 22-year-old widow whose militant husband was killed in a gunfight with police in Dagestan last year.

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