By Paul Nicholson
September 19 – Russia’s minister of sports Vitaly Mutko (pictured) has responded to European politicians’ calls for sports sanctions saying that nothing can be ruled out but that sports and politics should be kept separate.
Various European politicians have called for Russia to be stripped of hosting the 2018 World Cup and for the country to be excluded from international competition following their annexation of Crimea and incursion into Eastern Ukraine.
To date a low level package of economic sanctions have been agreed by the west indicating that the politicians would rather hit the country with high publicity social sanctions rather than hard hitting trade ones.
Speaking to Russian news agency ITAR-TASS, Mutko was realistic in his assessment of the situation saying: “Anything can happen. We remember the boycott of the Olympic Games. Everything can happen in this life. But we believe that sports should be left out of politics.
“Right now, the colleagues from the EU are trying to put pressure on international and European federations. Everything depends on how the international federations will behave. But I am not particularly alarmed about this because there are no prerequisites for this.”
Mutko said that on Wednesday the general secretary of the international swimming federation was in Kazan for a venue inspection and did not have any questions regarding the political situation. The Russians are using the international championships as a test for their ‘sporting visa’ programme, whereby competitors are issued visas for entry to the country when they are registered for competition with the sports governing body.
If successful a similar version of the scheme will be rolled out for the World Cup in 2018 with match tickets potentially doubling as visas for entry into the country.
Earlier in the week at a European technical conference in St Petersburg reviewing the Brazil 2018 World Cup, national team managers showed no enthusiasm for a boycott.
Spanish coach Vincente Del Bosque said: “We are sports people, people of football. For us, there are no borders. We are for football and for everyone that plays it. We are for integration and not for division of nations. Football is universal.”
Earlier this month German newspaper Bild said that the EU could approve sports sanctions as early as September 23 including a ban on the World Cup in 2018, the F1 Grand Prix in Sochi, the 2016 Ice Hockey World Championships and the 2015 FINA World Aquatics Championships.
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