Universiade in Krasnoyarsk if Anything an Even Greater ‘Disgrace’ than Sochi

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 11 – The just completed Univerisade international athletic competition in Krasnoyarsk represents an even greater “disgrace” than did the Sochi Olympiad, Russian opposition commentators say, marked by all the shortcomings of Putin’s Olympics plus all the horrors of life in that Siberian city.

            That reality has not been the focus of attention in the West because athletes from the United States and other major Western powers were not in attendance, because the Kremlin did not promote these games internationally as they did the Olympics, and because Krasnoyarsk is so far from Moscow that few outside the Russian Federation paid much attention.

            But everything that was wrong in Sochi remained wrong in Krasnoyarsk, including doping and the enrichment of Putin’s friends at the public trough, and new problems appeared, in particular horrific pollution.  As a result, commentators say, Krasnoyarsk was not only a digtrace for Russian athletes but a disgrace for Russia as a whole.

            Kirill Shulika, a sports commentator, led off this week by saying that the Universiade sunk Russia’s athletic reputation even more than the doping scandal has -- a scandal that by the way has not ended (lenta.ru/news/2019/03/11/iaaf/). Some blame this on“Russophobia.” But no one besides Russians accepts such nonsense (sports.ru/tribuna/blogs/viking_nord/2374432.html).

            Rosbalt commentator Aleksey Roshchin is even more blunt. He says Shulika is to kind.  Russia sent professionals into competitions masked as amateurs, and thus in Krasnoyarsk, Moscow created “a Potemkin village squared.”  Had the competition been elsewhere, it might not have been as embarrassing (rosbalt.ru/posts/2019/03/11/1768745.html).

            Unlike Sochi, Krasnoyarsk is “one of the dirtiest cities of the world, one in which ‘a black sky regime’ is routinely declared. That is the official term,” he says, “pure Orwell!” Moscow declared it “the sports capital of Russia,” spent enormous sums, much of them stolen, even though for most of the year it is unhealthy to engage in sports in Krasnoyarsk.

            The Russian authorities did close down the plants while foreigners were there to try to hide the pollution, an action of “fantastic hypocrisy,” Roshchin says.  But it didn’t stop the corruption or the doping – and everyone could see that, regardless of how clear the air had become.  As a result, Krasnoyarsk was “a complete disgrace” not only for Russian athletics but for Russia as a whole.

            Even more than Sochi, even if many were not paying attention.

            And as he did for the Sochi Olympiad, opposition leader Aleksey Navalny again documented the enormous waste of taxpayer money that led only to the enrichment of Putin’s cronies and seconded Roshchin’s conclusion that the whole thing was an embarrassment (rusmonitor.com/navalnyjj-ob-universiade-unizitelnoe-glupoe-i-lzhivoe-dejjstvo-za-1-271-mlrd.html).