B Flowers for the women, winners’ cheques from sponsors totaling more than 1 million rubles and plenty of applause. A number of arrangements had been organized for the return of the Russian team from the Paralympics in Milan and Cortina to Vnukovo Airport in Moscow in the middle of the night on Tuesday. The highlight of the reception for the team around the Paralympic champions Warwara Worontschichina and Iwan Golubkow, who had carried the Russian flag during the closing ceremony, was then the collective singing of the national anthem.
Soon there will be a reception with Vladimir Putin, at which the head of state will pin a medal on the successful athletes. This was announced at the airport by Pavel Roschkov, the president of the Russian Paralympic Committee.
Putin had already sent his congratulations via Telegram. And Roschkov thanked the president politely, without whom the successes that the small six-member team had propelled to third place on the medal table in Italy would not have been possible. So it has come as one would have expected. The sport is being exploited for propaganda.
Also the commentators of the major Russian sports portals celebrate the country’s return to the big stage of world sport. As usual, this happens without really mentioning why Russian athletes were barred from international competitions. Not a word about Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the ongoing conquest campaign since 2022. When Ukrainians are mentioned, they are portrayed as a real nuisance in sport.
Paralympics as Trailblazers
The Sport Express explicitly honors in this context the role of Andrew Parsons, the president of the International Paralympic Committee. Under his leadership, last autumn the ban against Russian athletes had been lifted. Now Parsons is celebrated for having really put the Ukrainian team in its place. After the Ukrainian delegation had complained about discriminatory measures by the organizing committee, Parsons said the complaints were an attempt to distract from sport.
Why the Ukrainian Paralympic champion Oleksandra Kononova was asked before the award ceremony to remove her earrings kept in the Ukrainian colors, Parsons could not explain. His federation has shown courage with the reintegration of Russia, with the re-admission of the Russian flag and anthem, according to Sport Express, courage that IOC President Kirsty Coventry did not possess before the Milan and Cortina Games. “Bring back Russian sport!” commented accordingly the Russian portal sports.ru.
The Paralympics would have shown how quickly protests against Russia could subside again. Even if the opening ceremony had been boycotted by 14 teams, Lithuania and Estonia stayed away from the closing ceremony in protest besides Ukraine. Protests like those of the Germans at the award ceremony for the long-distance runner Anastasia Bagijan were anyway the absolute exception.
The Paralympics had shown, on a small scale, how Russia’s return to the big world of sport could look. “Yes, many will talk about it, some will threaten boycotts,” says the commentary, “but six months will pass, the football players will have played a few games, the track and field athletes their appearances — and the topic will be forgotten.”
