For years, Russia has expanded its influence on world sports. The state-owned company Gazprom was an important means of doing this. Russia used the money to buy into Schalke 04, UEFA and other international associations. The Russian Umar Kremlev was even elected President of the International Boxing Federation because he could promise to bring Gazprom along as a sponsor.
“Of course, Russia has politically eaten its way into German sport,” says Sabine Poschmann, sports policy spokeswoman for the SPD in the Bundestag. “But it’s only one part where I think it needs to be replaced now. And many are on the way to doing it wonderfully.”
Poschmann is critical of the commitment of the President of the International Canoe Federation, Thomas Konietzko, in Saudi Arabia and suggests other sponsors for the German sport:
“I think you have to be careful now that you don’t go from bad to worse and that sponsors are starting again or replacing Russian sponsors, where you have to consider to what extent they want to have an influence, to what extent they also want to influence the sporting side Values we have represented in their countries.”
Distribution of sports funding as a means of influencing
For Poschmann, the current situation also offers an opportunity: “I think that’s a reason to make a change. So to think: Not where do I get the most money from – of course a club has to do it. But also because of that to think: These sponsors – do they represent the values of sport that we in Europe should emphasize much more?”
Sports policy can influence the behavior of associations and clubs above all through the allocation of federal sports funding. For example, the Federal Ministry of the Interior is already not paying any money to German associations for trips to competitions in which athletes from Russia or Belarus also take part.
Russian IOC members should be excluded
Basically, Poschmann formulates the goal of organizing more competitions in Europe and thus offering alternatives to autocratic countries such as Russia or China. Poschmann explains that sport did not distance itself from Russia earlier by saying that before the annexation of Crimea, people believed in a rapprochement.
“One had thought that Russia would move closer to the west and that this showdown would not happen.” Russian President Putin played the wrong cards and lied to other heads of government. Now that trust has been broken for a long time.
Poschmann explains the difference in the reaction to earlier events such as Russian state doping with the severity of the current situation, in which thousands of people are dying in Ukraine.
War in Ukraine – a turning point in sports too?
The SPD sports politician therefore demands that Russian IOC members such as the former high jumper Yelena Isinbayeva should also be excluded.
I think that’s logical, because it can’t be that they’re basically at the top of such an association, can basically still set the direction and also be able to present themselves somewhere. For me, isolation is also an exclusion of such members.
Athletes as “instruments of the Russian state”
So far, however, the sanctions have mainly affected athletes, many of whom are no longer allowed to take part in competitions. The sanctions were not aimed at individuals. “But there, too, it is the case that some of them have made themselves an instrument of their government,” said Poschmann. Among other things, she refers to the gymnast Ivan Kuliak, who had put the letter “Z” on his suit, which is used in Russia for war propaganda.
It will be a long time before Russian athletes take part in competitions again, says the SPD politician. “I don’t think we will succeed with Putin.”