Back to the Future: Sochi, Kazan and New York City
History was made on 21 February 2024. While the warmonger Vladimir Putin put on another sporting propaganda show in Kazan, the first drug dealer was convicted under the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act in the USA – exactly 10 years after the Sochi Doping Games.
Around the anniversary of the Russian war of destruction in Ukraine and just a few days after the death of Alexei Navalny, President Vladimir Putin continues to routinely use sport for propaganda. In Tatarstan's capital Kazan, he opened the first so-called Games of the Future, the prelude to a whole series of major international competitions in this Olympic year in Russia.
Also present in Kazan:
- the internationally multi-sanctioned Dmitry Chernyshenko, Deputy Prime Minister of Russia and CEO of the Sochi Doping Games 2014;
- former IOC member René Fasel, Life President of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), who does business in Russia and allegedly has Russian citizenship in addition to his Swiss citizenship;
- at least one active NOC president, Emomali Rahmon, President of Tajikistan, who has once again violated the recommendations of the IOC;
- at least one former NOC president, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, whose son Viktor now heads the Belarusian NOC;
- numerous top Russian athletes – including the Olympic champion Nikita Nagornyy and, of course, the doped and suspended ice princess Kamila Valieva.
Andy Brown
Jens Weinreich
Whether Russia's NOC president Stanislav Pozdnyakov was in Kazan with Putin could not yet be reliably ascertained. If readers have any information on this, we will update the article.
As always, sport (or what Putin considers to be sport and what the Olympic family, which cooperated with Putin for an eternity, considered to be sport) cannot be separated from his murderous politics. Just before the opening show of the so-called Games of the Future, Putin paid a demonstrative visit to the Gorbunov Kazan Aviation Plant. The company, a Tupolev subsidiary, ranks among major Russian aviation industry enterprises. The Kazan Aviation Plant is preparing to produce new Tu-160M strategic bomber/missile carriers.
This is how the Kremlin propagandists sold the visit:
„The President looked at information stands on the Kazan Aviation Plant’s achievements and inspected three overhauled Tu-160M strategic missile carriers. Vladimir Putin climbed into the cockpit of one of them and sat at the control wheel."
Then the Games of the Future in Kazan, where some of the world championships and mega events that were part of the shameful decade of Russian sport took place, such as the 2013 Summer Universiade, the 2015 Swimming World Championships and matches at the 2018 Football World Cup. Now Putin declared:
"I am glad to welcome to Russia the pioneers of phygital sports which is an innovative format that gave rise to the name to the competition. These are indeed the Games of the Future. It makes perfect sense that the idea to merge conventional and e-sports was born in Russia. Our country remains one of the leading sports powerhouses on the planet, the home of great athletes, victories and records. We have always championed sport and its lofty humanistic values. The Games of the Future are our gift to the international sports family."
Putin claimed that athletes from more than 100 nations take part in these games.
"This is the unique value of the Games of the Future for us along with the core principles of sport such as solidarity of countries and peoples, equality of all athletes, fair play and giving your all. The international phygital tournament is a unique event in the modern history of international sports – which begins right here and now in Russia."
The sermon on fair play in the state doping wonderland, which apparently still practises state doping, could not be without the equally mendacious reference to the alleged separation of sport and politics:
"The Games of the Future is free from politics, as well as all discrimination and double standards. I am positive that the true spirit of sports will be on display at the Games venues."
The term double standards is also part of the ABC of Russian propaganda. The claim of double standards, for example, also characterises the campaign for a total boycott of Israeli sport, which is heavily supported by Russia:
Jens Weinreich
And now to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, to New York City.
First conviction on the basis of the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act
There, ten years after the Sochi state doping games, where thousands of athletes from all over the world were cheated by Russia and the Olympic system, the first conviction was made on the basis of the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act. In other words, on the basis of a law that bears the name of the man who was primarily responsible for the gigantic doping fraud at the Sochi Games and beyond: Grigory Mikhailovich Rodchenkov, former head of the Russian so-called anti-doping laboratory, who went from perpetrator to crown witness.
Yesterday, Wednesday, when Putin was in Kazan on a propaganda tour, public prosecutor Damian Williams announced the first judgement based on the Rodchenkov Act:
Eric Lira was sentenced to three months in prison by Judge Lorna G. Schofield (Southern District of New York) for his role in providing banned performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to Olympic athletes in advance of the 2020 Summer Olympic Games held in Tokyo in 2021.
Lira is the first defendant to be charged and convicted, following his guilty plea in May 2023, under the act that was introduced in December 2020. The Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act established criminal penalties for participating and operating doping schemes to influence major international sport competitions, such as the Olympic Games. It applies to all major international sport competitions in which U.S. athletes participate, and where organizing entities receive sponsorship from companies doing business in the United States or are compensated for the right to broadcast their competition there. Penalties include fines of up to $1,000,000, or imprisonment of up to 10 years, depending on the offense.
The law provides restitutions to victims of these conspiracies. It protects whistleblowers. It established coordination and sharing of information with the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).
The law was heavily attacked by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA):
"No nation has ever before asserted criminal jurisdiction over doping offences that occurred outside its national borders – and for good reason. (…) This will have negative consequences as harmonization of the rules is at the very core of the global anti-doping system. WADA remains concerned that by unilaterally exerting U.S. criminal jurisdiction over all global doping activity, the Act will likely undermine clean sport by jeopardizing critical partnerships and cooperation between nations."
That was back then. With few exceptions, international sport has never stopped fighting against the Rodchenkov Act.
Read the full story at THE INQUISITOR!
Jens Weinreich
You might call it an irony of fate. But it is no coincidence. Ten years after the basically completely irregular, totally corrupt Sochi Doping Games, when the IOC handed over control to Russia's state dopers and celebrated with Vladimir Putin, there is at least one positive legacy: the Rodchenkov Act and this first conviction, which will be followed by many more.
