BOLSHOI KICHMAI, Russia (AP) — While Vladimir Putin and rich Olympic sponsors watch the Winter Games in gleaming arenas, boys in nearby Bolshoi Kichmai herd their goats by tying them to rickety bicycles, riding against the wind through a rocky valley where invading Russian armies slaughtered their ancestors 150 years ago.

These Circassian boys, their families and neighbors are the real hosts of the Sochi Olympics. Circassians, a Muslim ethnic group native to these lush lands that Putin chose for his hegemonic Olympic project, were massacred and exiled by czarist troops, persecuted under Stalin and largely ignored in the run-up to the Sochi Games.