MOSCOW: Russia on Saturday slammed the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games as a \u201cmassive failure.\u201d
\nForeign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova gave a long list of shortcomings at Friday\u2019s ceremony, which was not broadcast live on Russian television.
\n\u201cI wasn\u2019t planning to watch the opening. But after seeing the photos, I couldn\u2019t believe it wasn\u2019t a deep fake or photoshop,\u201d the spokeswoman wrote on Telegram
\nOnly a few Russian athletes have been approved to participate in the Games as \u201cneutrals.\u201d Competiors under the Russian flag have been banned over Russia\u2019s military offensive in Ukraine.
\nZakharova wrote that the \u201cridiculous open-air opening ceremony forced guests to sit for hours under pouring rain.\u201d
\n\u201cThe organizers did not think of either seeding the clouds or awnings,\u201d she said, referring to Russia\u2019s practice of sending up planes ahead of major outdoor events to attempt to break up clouds.
\nFrance detained a Russian man just ahead of the Games\u2019 opening, accusing him of a \u201cdestablization\u201d plot for the event. \u201cI wonder how many more \u2018spies\u2019 had to be embedded for the opening of the Olympics in Paris to end up such a massive failure?\u201d said Zakharova.
\nZakharova also mocked the \u201ctransport collapse\u201d on the day, after three arson attacks on the rail system, and France\u2019s blaming this on sabotage.
\nShe said the center of Paris was \u201ctransformed into a ghetto for homeless people,\u201d while \u201crats flooded the streets.\u201d
\nOther targets were the US rapper Snoop Dogg carrying the Olympic torch and gaffes such as introducing the South Korean team as North Korea and raising the Olympic flag upside-down.
\nZakharova picked on a part of the opening ceremony featuring drag queens, interpreted by some as parodying The Last Supper. She called it a \u201cmockery of a sacred story for Christians,\u201d saying that \u201cthe Apostles were shown as transvestites.\u201d
\n\u201cEvidently in Paris they decided that if the Olympic rings are multi-colored, you can turn it all into one giant gay parade,\u201d she added.
\nA spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church, Vakhtang Kipshidze, also condemned this section, writing on his personal Telegram channel that it was \u201ccultural and historical suicide.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MOSCOW: Russia on Saturday slammed the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games as a \u201cmassive failure.\u201d Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova gave a long list of shortcomings at Friday\u2019s ceremony, which was not broadcast live on Russian television. \u201cI wasn\u2019t planning to watch the opening. But after seeing the photos, I couldn\u2019t believe it …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":67922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67927,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67918\/revisions\/67927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}