By Li Hongmei

The Russian President's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, has said that some western countries have been unscrupulously and unceremoniously trying to politically discredit the forthcoming Sochi Olympics. He was speaking in an interview with the Moscow-based daily Komsomolskaya Pravda.

"But then, some Russian media outlets are lamentably also engaged in flinging mud at the Olympics and quoting all sorts of wish-wash to the effect that the Sochi Olympics are Putin's personal project. They also question the expediency of holding the Games in a subtropical region", he said.

Peskov added that he was amazed that "some western counterpropaganda experts, let's call them that way, claim that Russia is going to hold the Olympics in a place where Russian Tsars oppressed the destitute Caucasus nations".

"Isn't it high time these strange innuendoes were countered?" Peskov asked.

But he added that the strong, successful, rich and healthy are not always popular, "and that's precisely what we are today", the Kremlin official concluded.