Last week in the city of Vladikavkaz, capital of North Ossetia and just 250 short miles from Sochi where the 2014 Winter Olympics are to be held, a bomb exploded in a marketplace, injuring at least 173 people.  Seventeen people, and the suicide bomber who triggered the blast, were killed.  Rioting followed, and even more were killed.

If it can happen in Vladikavkaz, it can happen in Sochi. If it does, world leaders who send their athletes to the Russian games will have blood on their hands.

The world has seen a relentless torrent of violence throughout the Caucasus region ever since the bloody Russian assault on Georgia, followed by Russia’s shamelessly illegal annexation of Ossetia and Abkhazia.

It is obvious that the Putin regime has no control whatsoever of what happens in the Caucasus. Every day, it becomes clearer that Chechnya is a de facto state, that it has prevailed in its struggle for independence despite the bloodthirsty efforts of Vladimir Putin to prevent that result.

And now, in one of the most deranged political decisions of our times, world leaders appear ready to send hundreds of young athletes to Sochi, into what can only be called a meat grinder of terrorism and oppression.

What will happen if they do is predictable, and that will make it all the more reprehensible that world leaders, who have been warned, did nothing to prevent the bloodshed.