The Winter Olympics finished as they started,
with a celebration of what it is to be Russian.
But whereas the opening ceremony was Russia-self-defined,
the closing ceremony presented Russia through european eyes -
the director and the Italian screenwriter.
Foreigners have certainly had much to say about these Olympics.
For some particularly in the West
they were the homophobic games,
the terrorist games about to be blown up at any moment,
the profligate games costing a record demolishing $51 billion dollars.
They were even the dog killing games.
It wasn't just foreigners：
Pussy Riot risked whippings and arrests here for a punk protest music video,
and Aleksei A. Navalny's website shone a spotlights on the many allegations of corruption.
It's often easy to forget that the Olympics are actually a sporting competition,
particularly when they come with as much political baggage as the Sochi games.
And on the sporting front says the host nation：
you are on top of the world.
Despite the disappointments of Russia's men's hockey team
and young Yulia Lipnitskaya,
Russian athletes finished the competition in first place on the medals table.
So, President Vladimir Putin is proud,
and, in the main, Russians're proud, too.
There's nothing like victory to boost the national mood.
Putin actually made no uh...you know, no attempt to to hide it.
He said that this is...the Olympics is devoted to the resurgence of the Russian nation.
For him it was a extremely important to do this
sort of national building effort through sports.
Global events can always spoil a big party, though.
Ukraine's ongoing crisis has overshadowed these games to a certain extent.
And once the circus leaves town, it's the people who live in this region
will be best placed to answer the question：
Was it all worth it ？