Chernyshenko confident he can can deliver Vladimir Putin's dream
By Duncan Mackay in Sochi
Sochi is the Russian Riviera, the brochures claim. Sand and pebble beaches stretch nearly 20 miles along the Black Sea coast where you can swim in the sea from April through until October, and ski on the nearby slopes from October into May. The semi-tropical weather allows for a lush terrain found nowhere else in Russia.
Once a sleepy Soviet-era ski resort in the Caucasus mountains, near Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's summer residence, it is now undergoing probably the biggest change that a Russian city has ever seen in peace-time. Everywhere you look there are cranes, diggers and thousands of workmen scurrying around as the pace of the largest and most expensive construction project in Russia's modern history begins to pick-up.