“… [Britain] … has joined France, Germany and the United States … accepting the International Olympic Committee’s plan for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in the Paris Olympics …. [T]he IOC and … International Paralympic Committee have decided that [those] athletes … can take part … as neutrals if they have not publicly supported the invasion of Ukraine and […]
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“As the West has isolated Russia, Moscow has worked fervently to create alternatives to global commodities. But when it comes to Olympic-level athletic competitions, the Kremlin’s proxies may not pass muster with the Russian public.” “… In September, just a month after the 2024 Paris Olympics, Russia will launch the World Friendship Games, a Soviet-inspired extravaganza that looks like a […]
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“A decision by the International Olympic Committee paves the way for individuals from the two countries to take part over the objections of Ukraine and others.” “Individual athletes from Russia and Belarus who successfully qualify for next summer’s Paris Olympics will be allowed to compete in the Games, the International Olympic Committee announced on Friday, ending talk of a blanket […]
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“Russian Olympic Committee is hammered for taking sports organizations in occupied Ukraine under its umbrella.” “The International Olympic Committee on Thursday banned the Russian Olympic Committee, effective immediately but it has not changed its position on the possibility of Russian athletes taking part in the Paris 2024 Olympics. The IOC said … Russia’s decision to claim regional sports organizations in […]
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“Russians will be allowed … as neutral athletes at next year’s Paralympics in Paris … following the invasion of Ukraine. The International Paralympic Committee voted 74-65 … on Friday against suspending Russia’s membership entirely — which would have meant a full ban … then voted 90-65 in favor of ‘partially’ suspending the country through 2025. … because of ‘breaches of […]
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(Moscow Times – Sept. 22, 2023) The Kremlin said on Friday it hopes Russia could once again become part of the Olympic community despite sanctions against Russian athletes over Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has suggested allowing athletes from Russia and Moscow’s ally Belarus to compete as individuals under a neutral flag at the 2024 Olympics […]
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“… The World Aquatics Bureau announced … athletes from Russia and Belarus would be allowed to compete in international events … as ‘neutrals’ …. the cop-out … most athletic governing bodies have taken since Russia invaded Ukraine …. At least Wimbledon — in 2022 — actually banned Russian and Belarusian players …. [T]he men’s and women’s governing bodies of tennis […]
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“… Increasingly, various governing bodies are allowing [Russian athletes] back into Olympic qualifying competitions as neutral competitors without national flags or anthems. Most sports initially barred Russians from competing soon after last year’s full-scale invasion [of Ukraine]. The International Olympic Committee strongly backs those moves even as the body itself says it hasn’t decided if athletes from Russia and ally […]
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“The key factor in weighing the IOC’s ultimate decision on letting Russians participate at the 2024 Paris Games is how well athletes behave in international competitions … Olympic body[] president Thomas Bach said …. ‘It’s too soon to draw final conclusions’ … ‘[W]e have the responsibility not to punish athletes for the acts of their government.’ … Another Olympic Truce […]
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“Daniil Medvedev had to skip the Wimbledon tournament last year …. The 2021 U.S. Open champion was banned from the All England Club, just like every other Russian and Belarusian tennis player, because of the war in Ukraine. … [T]he 27-year-old Russian … achieved his best result at the grass-court Grand Slam this week … reaching the semifinals. …” Click […]
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“As Wimbledon gets into full swing, there’s no hiding the ructions Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has caused in locker rooms.” “… [A]s the world’s top stars … battl[e] … through … Wimbledon, tennis is grappling with how to handle all the Russian players near the top of the game. Ukraine’s players, for their part, reckon the sport is failing […]
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“Complex questions about if — and how — Russian athletes could return to … competition[] ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics looked far from being resolved when sports governing bodies met Wednesday. Different sports have varying sporting, political and logistical pressures, and there’s a lack of clarity about how to define neutral status for Russian and Belarusian athletes that is […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Feb. 15, 2022) Star Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva said she failed a doping test due to a mix-up with her grandfather’s heart medication, an Olympic official told Reuters Tuesday. Olympic testers confirmed last week that Valieva — who led the Russian Olympic Committee to team gold at the Beijing Winter Olympics and is a […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Felix Light – Feb. 4, 2022) As the Winter Olympics get underway in Beijing, Russia has assumed a pivotal role in an event billed as a display of China’s might on the world stage. With much of the international community shunning the Games on human rights grounds, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s presence at the opening […]
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Ukrainian athletes should avoid standing next to their Russian rivals at the 2022 Beijing Olympics next week, Ukraine’s Sports Minister said […]
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The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has revoked the right of a Russian laboratory to carry out blood sample analysis after it failed to comply with laboratory standards and ethics […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – July 29, 2021) Russian athletes have won a total of 25 medals in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics under the neutral Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) flag. Here’s our guide to team ROC: Why can’t Russian athletes compete under the Russian flag? In 2015, the Russian government was accused of doping — administering performance-enhancing drugs to athletes […]
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A 2015 report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) found evidence of systematic, mass doping among Russian athletes, resulting in Team Russia’s ban from international competition […]
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Join us for a discussion of the 2018 World Cup, as leading scholars assess its significance for sport, Russia, and the world. About this Event At this PONARS Eurasia event, we will discuss the findings of the forthcoming edited volume, Russia and the 2018 FIFA World Cup, with its contributors, including Richard Arnold, Olga Yakimova, Marina Mikhaylova, Michael Cole, Andrew […]
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MOSCOW. Feb 8 (Interfax) – The Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) is awaiting the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s permission to play the song Katyusha instead of the Russian anthem at world championships and the Olympic Games, ROC President Stanislav Pozdnyakov said. “We’ve made the proposal and are awaiting a response from the IOC. There’s no rush. There’s still enough time to […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Dec. 10, 2019) The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on Monday hit Russia with a four-year ban from competing or hosting major world sporting events, including the Olympic Games and World Championships. The move comes after WADA’s executive committee unanimously ruled that Moscow had tampered with doping laboratory data. Russian athletes will only be able to […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – January 8, 2019) With the clock ticking towards new sanctions, Russian authorities said on Monday they would allow a World Anti-Doping Agency inspection team to return to a Moscow laboratory to retrieve data it had earlier been denied. Russia’s Sport Minister Pavel Kolobkov said WADA officials would return to Moscow on Wednesday. WADA also confirmed […]
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(Article ©2019 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Jan. 1, 2019 – also appeared at rferl.org/a/wada-bitterly-disappointed-at-russian-failure-to-meet-anti-doping-deadline/29687033.html) Russia faces the possibility of renewed sporting sanctions after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) confirmed that Russian officials failed to hand over data from its anti-doping laboratory by December 31. WADA President Craig Reedie said on January 1 that he was “bitterly […]
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“[WADA] reinstated Russia on Thursday despite a wave of protests, ending the nearly three-year suspension of the country’s drug-testing program because of a state-sponsored doping scheme. WADA’s decision after a vote of its 12-member executive committee was called ‘the greatest treachery against clean athletes in Olympic history’ by the lawyer of the whistleblower who helped uncover Russia’s cheating. WADA decided […]
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“… Pussy Riot has claimed responsibility for four people who ran onto the field and disrupted the World Cup final. … [tweeting] that the disruption was a protest. … four people … charged onto the field in the 52nd minute … in what appeared to be old-fashioned police uniforms … [They] were tackled to the ground by stewards. … ‘Hello […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Daniel Kozin – July 9, 2018) Tears, pride and regret were the dominant emotions after Russia’s dramatic exit from the World Cup on Saturday. In the rollercoaster match against Croatia, the team was on the cusp of progressing to the semifinals of the competition for the first time since 1966 but had its fairytale run […]
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“Russia will meet Croatia in the quarterfinals Saturday in Sochi, where it will play in a stadium built to stage the opening and closing ceremonies of those now-discredited Winter Olympics. And though there is no evidence of any wrongdoing with the soccer team, its performance here — including a round of 16 win over Spain, the World Cup champion eight […]
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“… Russia’s host nation status had been met with resistance by some in the West … suggest[ing] the tournament could be unsafe and play into the hands of Putin … accused by Washington of conducting ‘malign activities’ around the world. … the month-long tournament … has so far been without major security incidents. Concerns about racism and hooligan violence … […]
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“… Putin’s bet that the World Cup will produce a win for his government is a big gamble. The global political climate of 2018 is very different than the environment that existed when Russia was awarded the World Cup eight years ago, or even four years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed the Crimean Peninsula after hosting the 2014 […]
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“… the Russian World Cup isn’t Berlin all over again. First, Putin isn’t as evil and ambitious as Hitler. Second, he’s a much better-known quantity than Nazism was in 1936. Hitler at that point had said disturbing things but few foreigners took him either literally or seriously. He hadn’t lifted a finger against other countries. Many Jews were still living […]
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(Article ©2018 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Tony Wesolowsky – July 2, 2018 – also appeared at rferl.org/a/team-russia-strikes-unexpected-goal-national-unity/29333415.html) Goalkeeper Igor Akinfeev secured the biggest upset of the 2018 World Cup, and arguably in Russia’s soccer history, with his two massive saves in a penalty shoot-out with Spain on July 1. And the euphoric after-party he has sparked […]
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“…. Increasing taxes, raising the retirement age, even starting another war because Russia is doing so well in soccer are the recurring jokes on Moscow’s streets. People compete in creativity in trying to imagine what else the government can do to them while everyone is distracted by the World Cup. One of the jokes is that Putin will now present […]
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(Article ©2018 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Pete Baumgartner – June 30, 2018 – article also appeared at rferl.org/a/russia-world-cup-team-no-multiethnicity-swiss/29329228.html) While there is a splash of ethnic diversity on virtually every team playing in soccer’s 2018 Russia World Cup, many cite the Swiss national team for setting the standard for being multicultural. Known affectionally by its fans […]
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“… [when] FIFA’s 22-person executive committee awarded both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups … victories by Russia and Qatar … risky bids, were met with immediate speculation of vote bartering and outright bribery. … rumors of a Russian scheme to bribe referees on Spain’s behalf in the 2010 World Cup …. FIFA sent investigators to look into it … […]
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(PONARS Eurasia – ponarseurasia.org – Richard Arnold – June 26, 2018) Richard Arnold is Associate Professor of Political Science at Muskingum University, where he teaches courses in comparative politics and international relations, including courses on Russian politics and the politics of sport. He is the author of Russian Nationalism and Ethnic Violence: Symbolic Violence, Lynching, Pogrom, and Massacre (2016, Routledge) […]
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“… The White House is planning a Trump-Putin meeting in Moscow that likely would occur around the same time as the World Cup final July 15. …”
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“… In our psychology research, we’ve noticed a striking difference in how often people smile in the United States when compared to Russia. To Americans, it might be easy to assume that this says something about Russians – that they’re an unfriendly, callous people. … that’s not the case …. there are two likely explanations …. Different cultures have different […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, June 24, 2018) Many commentators in both Russia and the West have suggested that the World Cup has helped Russia to overcome much of the opprobrium it has suffered as a result of its invasion of Ukraine, its meddling in elections in Western countries and in general its disruptive behavior. And it […]
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“… Putin has given the Russian security services free rein in the lead-up to the World Cup. …”
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(Article ©2018 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Carl Schreck – June 20, 2018) – also appeared at rferl.org/a/russia-world-cup-russia-opposition-pension-protests/29306847.html) As World Cup fever mounts in Russia, opponents of a government plan to raise the retirement age find themselves jostling for political position, with a handful of protests announced against the proposed measure set to coincide with soccer’s centerpiece […]
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“In honor of World Cup 2018, I thought I ought to offer the basics of football slang. Here the key word is ‘basics.’ Decades of living next to a stadium – the roar of the crowd, the traffic, the mounted police, the rowdy fans, the loud celebrations, and the tendency to use any courtyard as a public toilet – have […]
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(Article ©2018 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – June 16, 2018 – also appeared at rferl.org/a/us-warns-terrorism-risk-world-cup-venues-stadiums-train-stations-airports-russia/29292547.html) The U.S. State Department is warning that “terrorists” may target World Cup venues in Russia, which is hosting the monthlong soccer tournament, but it did not point to any specific threat. In a travel advisory issued late on June 15, the department […]
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(Russia Matters – russiamatters.org – Jean-François Ratelle, assistant professor at the University of Ottawa with an academic focus on insurgency in the North Caucasus – June 13, 2018 – russiamatters.org/analysis/terror-threat-russian-speaking-jihadists-wont-end-world-cup-and-west-should-care) As Russia gears up to host the month-long World Cup soccer tournament beginning June 14, security experts — from scholars and analysts to German police — have been warning of possible […]
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“… When the final whistle sounded, jeers and whistles rang out from the stands … filled almost entirely with home supporters. Going into its first domestic World Cup, Russia has now gone without a win in its last seven matches. … drawing against Turkey … losing to Austria — both of which failed to qualify — in its final two […]
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(Kremlin.ru – June 14, 2018) The ceremony was also attended by FIFA President Gianni Infantino, heads of state and government of Abkhazia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Moldova, Panama, Paraguay, Rwanda, South Ossetia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly of the […]
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“In 2010 when this tournament was awarded, no one thought Russia would suddenly become a bastion of human and civil rights, though it’s worth reflecting on all that’s happened since then. There’s not just the annexation of Crimea, the war in Ukraine and the concerns about US election meddling. Or just the controversy surrounding the nerve agent attack on the […]
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“The top U.S. counterintelligence official is advising Americans traveling to Russia for football’s World Cup beginning this week that they should not take electronic devices because they are likely to be hacked by criminals or the Russian government. … William Evanina, an FBI agent and the director of the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center, warned World Cup travelers ….” […]
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Russia vs. Saudi Arabia live stream info, channel: How to watch World Cup 2018 opener on TV and online …
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“Russian fans have a negative image in Europe, with many remembering the riots in Marseille during the 2016 European Cup.”
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