During a press conference in Las Vegas this past Saturday, Russian boxer Dmitry Bivol insisted that he knew very little about politics and asked reporters not to question him about things like the Russia-Ukraine conflict or the COVID-19 pandemic. “You know I don’t know about politics,” he stressed as reporters bombarded him with questions regarding what he thought about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine just a day before his championship fight.
Although Bivol emerged victorious, he was not allowed to represent Russia and was prevented from carrying the Russian flag or playing the Russian anthem. However, the mere fact that he was allowed to fight makes Bivol luckier than many other Russian and Belarusian athletes.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the West has continued to impose punishing sanctions on Moscow, targeting oligarchs and generals close to President Vladimir Putin, barring Russian banks from the SWIFT financial network, cutting off state-owned media from all services in Europe, banning Russian oil and gas imports, and disallowing Russian athletes to participate in international sporting events.
For instance, Russian football clubs have been banned from competing in Europe and major events like the European Championship and the 2023 women’s World Cup. Similarly, Russian and Belarusian athletes have been barred from participating in events sponsored by the Olympic Committee, Wimbledon, Formula One, the Boston Marathon, World Taekwondo, and FIFA. Several other sporting bodies like the Women's Tennis Association, the National Hockey League, and the World Boxing Council have allowed the participation of athletes from Russia on the condition they compete in an individual capacity and with no affiliation to their country.
Extending sanctions to individual athletes is designed to put more domestic pressure on Putin’s regime. Harvard professor Margarita Balcameda, for instance, posits that by losing international prestige and through the effect of economic sanctions, “the Russian population [will get a] clear signal that Putin is no longer able to guarantee their well being.”
However, the West’s reasoning is hardly aligned with reality. Whether the athletes are banned for refusing to speak out against Putin or in the hope that they will as a result of the ban, what is clear is that the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) are viewing Russia through a purely Western lens. For instance, while American athletes can freely criticise politicians and their government without fearing any consequences, their Russian counterparts don’t share the same freedoms and privileges.
In fact, high-profile Russian athletes have failed to explicitly criticise Putin’s actions even as they have expressed sympathy for Ukraine and its people. Former tennis star Maria Sharapova, for example, was criticised for not using the word ‘war’ or referring to Putin in her statement on the war, despite expressing sympathy for Ukrainians and making humanitarian donations. Other top Russian tennis players like Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev have also called for an end to the war but remained silent on Russia’s involvement.
Russian athletes critical of Putin are short in number and usually express their dissent against Moscow from another country. Former Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, who is extremely critical of Putin, fled the country in 2013 out of fear of persecution. Even though Kasparov lives in the US, he has said that he fears an assassination attempt by the Russian agents over his activism against Moscow’s human rights abuses.
In fact, the Kremlin has a long history of stifling dissent, particularly by assassinating critics. In 2018, Russian agents poisoned former intelligence agent Sergei Skripal, who settled in the United Kingdom more than a decade ago, on the suspicion that he might be helping British intelligence. In 2020, opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned due to his direct criticism of Russia. Against this background, it is not surprising that Russian athletes have so far kept silent amid the ongoing war.
The decision to bar sportspersons has also led to a spike in instances of prejudice and discrimination against Russian athletes. An agent for Russian ice hockey players in the US told the media that Russian athletes are facing “disturbing levels” of harassment. Ice hockey agent Dan Milstein, who represents the majority of Russian-born players in the National Hockey League, has said that his clients are worried for their safety due to the xenophobic threats they have been receiving.
Crucially, he says they are stuck in a Catch-22 situation—players who have gone as far as to publicly say ‘no war’ are chided in the West for not outright condemning Russia or Putin; however, the families of these players, who are most often still in Russia, face “ill wishes and death threats” from Russians. In this regard, Milstein told ESPN: “While some of my clients can speak freely in the safety of being in North America, their family could be scrutinised back home and anything could happen.”
Therefore, by refusing to read between the lines of the “no war” messages many Russian athletes have put out, Western commentators could intentionally or inadvertently be putting them in danger, simply because they did not deliver a pre-approved condemnation of Russia or Putin.
Moreover, banning Russian athletes would only serve to further charges of Western double standards. While Washington and Brussels have been eager to slap sanctions on Russian sportspersons as a response to the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine, they have been reluctant to impose sanctions on athletes from other countries who are guilty of the same thing. For example, in 2021, Ethiopian long-distance runners were allowed to participate in the Boston Marathon despite the US accusing Addis Ababa of starting a war and creating a humanitarian crisis in the Tigray region. Likewise, athletes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were allowed to participate in sporting events in the EU and the US despite their involvement in the war in Yemen.
Taking all of this into consideration, the decision to bar Russian athletes could actually end up achieving the opposite of what the West hopes to achieve. As Putin continues to accuse the US and the EU of hypocritically singling out Russian athletes, his support at home has only increased, with citizens believing that Russians are being discriminated against merely on the basis of their nationality. In fact, this siege mentality has galvanised several Russian sportspersons to condemn the West’s decision and support the war. Therefore, rather than sparking a domestic revolt against the Kremlin, banning Russian athletes has resulted in Russian athletes either being reluctant to criticise Russia or expressing greater support for Putin’s actions.
Banning Russian Athletes Is Hypocritical and Will Have Zero Impact
The banning of Russian athletes has resulted in Russian athletes either being reluctant to criticising Russia or expressing greater support for Vladimir Putin’s actions.
May 12, 2022
Russian tennis player Andrey Rublev signed ‘no war, please’ on a camera following his win in the Dubai Tennis Championship’s semi-final. IMAGE SOURCE: SKY SPORTS