On CNN on Thursday morning, a former US general told the anchor that we should have seen the Russian invasion of Ukraine coming. We should have known the nature of the beast, he said, of a leadership that is obsessed with power and doing whatever it takes to win.
Ukraine has been attacked, its people are running for cover and the western world is seething. But seething at Russia is something the West has had to become good at for years because they have had so much practice. The Russian leadership — or, rather Vladimir Putin — does not care that the rest of the world gets angry at them because of their obsession with the notion of Mother Russia and that lingering longing for the good old days of the USSR.
They crave that isolation, that sense of being a nation apart from the rest of the world, popping their heads above the parapet only when they feel a need to show the planet how strong a people they are.
As the Ukraine is Putin’s push to create a place for himself in history, to leave his big-man legacy stamped on his people, so too has Russia used sport to create an image for the rest of the world to admire.
And, like the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has shown for years that they refuse to play by the same rules as the rest of the world. The more they get away with, the more emboldened they become.
“From the Sochi Olympics to the 2018 football World Cup to the massive state-sponsored Olympic doping programme that Russia continues to insist never existed, sport is a useful prototype for the rules of engagement that the Putin regime is now so dramatically bringing to the battlefield,” wrote Jonathan Liew in the Guardian on Tuesday.
As Clinton van Berg, the fine sports writer, outlines in his recent book Guns and Needles, the Russian state played an active and proactive role in covering up doping. The McLaren Report found Russia’s state-sponsored doping programme was “systemic”. More than 1,000 Russian athletes in 30 sports were involved and Russia was stripped of 46 Olympic medals. What to do? Hey, said the world, let’s sanction them. The World Anti-Doping Agency banned the Russian Federation from all major sports for four years.
The Court for Arbitration in Sport, where good decisions go to be blunted, put it to two years. Now they may compete under a neutral flag. In Tokyo, the 300-strong Russian Olympic committee team won 20 gold and finished third on the medal table. That’ll show them.
Sports administrators have toadied up to Putin and Russia. Hey, they are both in it for the power and photo opportunity. In 2014, before he was banned, Sepp Blatter, the former president of Fifa announced that the Ukraine and Russia would be put in separate groups if the former qualified for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Blatter ignored calls to move the tournament from Russia because of their actions in the Ukraine.
“A boycott never achieves anything and does not have a positive effect. Fifa is fully supporting the World Cup in Russia,” said Blatter. “When we received letters from North America, we answered that this is football. We believe in the country [Russia] and their government ... Russia is the world’s biggest country. You know, Russia is in the focus of the world press. Football cannot only unite Russia, but can also show the whole world that it is stronger than any protest movement.”
Will sanctions work? The calls for sports to boycott Russia became stronger this week. Uefa are considering moving the 2022 Champions League final from the Krestovsky Stadium in St Petersburg. The stadium is sponsored by Gazprom, the Russian state-owned energy company. You would have noticed their sponsorship on boards at Champions League matches this week.
Reuters reported that Gazprom accounts for 5% of Russia’s GDP. Gazprom also sponsor Schalke 04 and own Red Star Belgrade. Football365 noted that adverts for Nord Stream 2, the second gas pipeline to supply Europe, have been seen at Schalke matches. The pipeline has now been put on hold by Germany. It’s a start.
Uefa needs to consider its relationship with Gazprom. It needs to consider its relationship with Russia. Sporting isolation works and it hurts people like Putin. He wants to be seen as powerful and strong, but it’s hard to do that if you aren’t allowed out to play with the rest of the world.
Ukraine needs the world to stop seething and start doing. Proper, effective bans and sanctions will help suck the air out the bluster and potentially slow up the mayhem. Kick Russia out of sport. Let them seethe in the motherland.
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