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| TASS/Getty Images, c. 2017 |
Alex Ovechkin: a gifted hockey player, yet a fool; expresses shock at the backlash provoked by his cameo appearance in a propaganda spot for Putin’s political party; insists he harbours no pro-war sentiment, even as evidence proves otherwise. {ESPN 17 September}https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/49965058/ovechkin-says-supports-russia-not-pro-war
Not pro-war, are we? —
FTA: In the campaign video that aired in Russia earlier this month, Ovechkin stands with supporters of Putin's United Russia political party as Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov delivers a monologue warning anyone who comes at Russia "with a sword" to "expect no mercy: we will rise together, as we do today." Ovechkin, wearing a black polo shirt, stands stoically behind Lavrov.
Ovechkin's appearance earned international condemnation from critics of the regime, which has mounted an offensive against Ukraine that began in 2014 and expanded to a full-scale invasion in 2022 that has resulted in more than 1 million military and civilian casualties. In a letter to the NHL this week, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., called on the league to consider banning Ovechkin over his participation in the ad.
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The series of TV advertisements features more than 30 Putin supporters. One of them is Maria Lvova-Belova, a Russian official who has been involved in the kidnapping and "re-education" of Ukrainian children. Lvova-Belova, in a televised meeting with Putin, said she had personally taken a Ukrainian boy from war-ravaged Mariupol. The International Criminal Court issued a warrant for her arrest in 2023. Ovechkin stands alongside her and others in a large group shot featured in the ads.
Academic experts in Russian propaganda said Ovechkin's appearance signifies a critical victory for Putin in his bid to justify the country's costly military campaign in Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities have accused the Russian military of murdering more than 17,000 Ukrainian civilians, including more than 700 children.
"You can't look away from the fact that Russia is perpetuating a genocide on Ukrainian people," said Sarah Oates, a senior scholar in the field of political communication and democratization at the University of Maryland. "Putin has said Ukraine and Ukrainians have no right to exist. And this is a key reason for the invasion. Ovechkin supports Putin, he supports the Russian regime, and that means he supports genocide."
Asked about assertions that Russia is responsible for a genocide, Ovechkin told ESPN, "I hope it's not gonna, it's not gonna be like that," before he and a team media relations representative ended the interview.
He hopes ‘it’s not gonna be like that’; well, either this fellow is a coward speaking out of both sides of his mouth, or else an impossibly aloof simpleton, utterly oblivious to what is happening immediately about him save when he happens to be upon a sheet of ice.
I numbered myself among those who called upon the National Hockey League to expel all the Russian players — even the vaunted Ovechkin, presently the game’s all-time leading goal scorer and, arguably, the league’s most recognisable star — at the very onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Obviously, the NHL hearkened not, and shall decline once more to do the right thing now. All that concerns the league, the Washington Capitals, and their sponsors alike is the wringing of every last dollar out of the general public before society at large comes crashing down about us; whilst the American people have demonstrated, with abundant clarity, that they care nothing whatsoever for the plight of Ukraine and her people.
I fully anticipate that Ovechkin shall be greeted with a standing ovation at the Capitals’ season opener in Washington — and be warmly received within every arena he visits, this expected to be his final season prior to retirement — whilst Ukrainian children continue to suffer abduction and death amid the war.
Perchance, though, karma shall one day pay Alexander Ovechkin a visit. To anyone inclined to regard him as some manner of victim: he is nothing of the sort. —
FTA: Throughout Ovechkin's career, Capitals officials and people close to Ovechkin have suggested in media interviews that he was under pressure from the Kremlin to support the president and could not safely criticize Putin with his family living in Russia.
In 2022, after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, the then-Capitals general manager Brian MacLellan said Russian players were trying to navigate "what they can say, what they can't say," and "the repercussions that could happen back home." Of Ovechkin, he said: "He gets pressure from all sides -- from North America, from Russia, from family."
"It's a cop-out," said Slava Malamud, a Russian-born former Sport-Express hockey reporter who said the Capitals revoked his press credential in 2014 after he criticized Ovechkin's "Save Children from Fascism" post.
"All of these excuses presuppose the existence of an alternative Ovechkin no one has ever seen, one who is meekly doing what a brutal dictator tells him to do," Malamud told ESPN. "That is not an Ovechkin we have ever seen. We see a man who is proud of his president, who is standing next to war criminals.
"I don't think it's a coincidence after signing his last contract that he comes out with his unambiguous support for the war."
Unlike the great multitude of Russians, Alexander Ovechkin possesseth the means to depart Russia altogether, and might well become a leading dissident voice, were he truly devoted unto peace and unto the deliverance of children from the grip of fascism. Instead, he elects to return thither when his playing days are ended, thereby demonstrating his continued fealty unto a veritable demon. In so doing, he may thereby have secured a one-way passage unto Hades. At least I hope it be so.
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