Putin and Penalty Kicks

In authoritarian political systems,
sports take on outsized importance. After all, national greatness is part of
the bargain: a measure of democratic freedom is traded for strength and
victory, whether on the battlefield or in the stadium. That logic holds for
Vladimir Putin’s Russia, too—which
is why you could say Putin has had very bad month. In France, at the Euro Cup,
the violence of Russian hooligans almost got the national team banned, before a
humiliating loss to Wales took care of that, sending the Russians home doubly
embarrassed. Days later the International Olympic Committee upheld a ban on
Russian track-and-field athletes at the forthcoming Rio Olympics in response to
evidence of a widespread, state-sponsored doping project. Seeing as the
legitimacy of the Putin system comes less from the ballot box than from the
deliverance of national pride and success, it was likely not the most upbeat of
weeks inside the Kremlin.

Dating back to the Cold War, Soviet
rulers embraced sports as a vehicle to prove Communism’s
superiority, at whatever the cost. International sporting events are a way of
forcing the West’s acceptance, as Putin achieved in
hosting the Sochi Winter Olympics two years ago, and of delivering a sense of
national pride by winning. The Russians were so desperate to win we now know
they resorted to extensive doping. These days, it seems like international
sports deepen Russians’ sense
of grievance and isolation from the world. Sports have become a microcosm of
Russians’ conflicted
desire to gain the respect and validation of an international world order whose
legitimacy they question, and seek to undermine. 

Successive generations of Kremlin
rulers have tried to project the image of the country as a besieged fortress,
alone in the world and surrounded by enemies. For Vladimir Putin and those
around him, Russia’s latest tribulations in the world of
global sport seem to bear out that worldview. First came the clashes in
Marseille, in which Russian soccer fans fought with England supporters during
the EuroCup. Some Russian fans shot flare guns towards the English section of
the stands and burst into the section as the match ended. Fights spilled out in
the streets, as well. More than 30 people were hospitalized, including several
with critical brain injuries. 

Russian soccer fans are late to
international hooliganism, but the Western press and French law enforcement
still managed to make it sound like there was something novel and sinister
about the Russian version of the problem, calling Russia’s
violent fans “well-trained” and
organized. Russians, in turn, pointed to the bad press as yet another example
of Western institutions’
inherently anti-Russian
ideology. 

Similar to how Russian officials have
responded to, for example, Western sanctions over Ukraine, they hit back on
criticism over fan violence, conceding nothing and instead raising the
rhetorical temperature. Vladimir Markin, a top law-enforcement official,
suggested that Europeans couldn’t
handle Russia’s soccer fans because they are more accustomed to gay-pride
parades than dealing with
“real
men.”
Igor Lebedev, a deputy in parliament and member of Russia’s football union, said, “Nothing wrong with
fighting. Keep it up boys!”

With time, however, the tone changed.
The Russian team was fined 150,000 Euros and given a suspended disqualification
from the tournament—one that proved superfluous after the
disastrous 0-3 loss to Wales—which appeared to convince Russian
officials that the matter was serious enough not to be laughed away. The
ugliness of the violence immediately raised questions about Russia’s
ability to host the 2018 World Cup, which will be held in 11 cities across the
country. Even before the brutal scenes in France, Russia’s
World Cup was already tarnished, marred by the specter of corruption and
vote-buying. Putin has been a lonely defender of ousted FIFA president Sepp
Blatter, the man who presided over the selection of Russia to host in 2018 and
who has since been brought down by allegations of corruption. With an event of
such national prestige at stake, officials began to display uncharacteristic
contrition. The country’s sports minister, Vitaliy Mutko,
said that violent fans in masks “brought shame on their country.” For his
part, Putin condemned the attacks in Marseille, calling them a “disgrace.” But
Putin couldn’t help himself, adding that “I
truly don’t understand how 200 of our fans could beat up several thousand
English.”

Although some anonymous British
officials theorized the Russian hooligans were part of the Kremlin’s
strategy of “hybrid war”—using
a patchwork of covert, deniable means to undermine the Western security order—that
seems an unfounded and paranoid exaggeration. 
Over the years, nationalists and football hooligans have periodically
been convenient allies of the Kremlin, but ultimately the Putin state is wary
of uncontrolled violence, which could one day threaten its own power. The young
men who came to France from Russia may have been well prepared for a fight—armed
with metal bars and fingerless gloves—but in many respects, their
inspiration comes more from the football hooligans of England of the 1970s and
80s than anything homegrown.

Just days after the soccer hooligan
controversy, on June 17, the International Association of Athletics
Federations, the governing body for track and field competitions, banned
Russian athletes from the 2016 Rio Olympics for sustained and wide-reaching
doping violations. The decision was historic: individual athletes have been
barred from international competition for doping, but never entire national
teams. Investigations into Russian doping suggested an illicit program with
alleged support of the country’s security services. To date, Russia’s
response to the allegations, which have gathered in strength and damning detail
in recent months, has been to try and cauterize the wound, admitting to a
certain degree of malfeasance while denying a deeply rooted culture of doping
condoned at the top. After the ban was announced, Putin tried this tactic anew,
suggesting doping violations were limited to a few individuals, and that
banning the whole track and field team amounted to “collective
punishment,” saying
it was akin to a prison sentence for
“an
entire family” if
one relative committed a crime.

The International Olympic Committee
upheld that ban, while keeping open the possibility that individual Russian
athletes who go to extraordinary efforts to prove they are clean could be
allowed to compete. Either way, the whole affair casts a far more humiliating
note on Russian sporting exploits. It’s possible Russia may turn its back
on Rio in a huff. A widely circulated tabloid with Kremlin ties asked the
question, “Is it worth Russia going to Rio?” After
all, the editorial posited, “They want us to crawl to them on our
knees, ask forgiveness, and beg to be let in.” 

For Putin and those close to him,
efforts to exclude or punish Russia, whether for its annexation of Crimea or
support for state-sponsored doping programs, are seen sees as pieces of a larger
conspiracy. Today’s Russian elite sees plots against
its power and authority everywhere it turns: some of those visions are grounded
in actual Western policy, if a distorted understanding of it; others are
nothing more than baseless, paranoid fantasy; and, like its poorly performing
soccer team or apparently state-run doping program, no small number are
problems of Russia’s own making. After the loss to
Wales, a fitting joke started to make the rounds, playing Russia’s
sporting woes off the geopolitical tensions it has encountered over the years.
Echoing a comment that Putin made in 2014, when he said that unidentified
soldiers in Crimea weren’t Russian troops but had purchased
their military gear in a shop, the joke has Putin saying “those
aren’t
our soccer players on the field, they just bought their uniforms in a shop.”

This piece originally appeared in Zocalo Public Square.