Did FIFA Encourage the Russian Invasion of Ukraine?

Few things can have given the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, more delight in recent years than having the prestige of hosting the Football World Cup in 2018. But four years earlier Russia had illegally seized Crimea from Ukraine and then invaded that country’s eastern territories. And four years later, Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. How pivotal in that decision was allowing Russia to proceed with hosting the World Cup, despite what it had done in 2014?

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, much attention has been paid to the way in which the Western world had for years largely ignored Russian misdemeanours. The attack on Georgia in 2008 and the murder in London of Alexander Litvinenko are just two specific examples. More generally, there was the turning of a blind eye to corrupt Russian business and political practice, because it enriched thousands in places like the City of London.

More attention was paid when Putin seized Crimea and invaded the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine in 2014. At first, Putin denied any knowledge of what was happening. A year later, in a documentary for Russian TV, he boasted that he had signed the order to take Crimea before flying down to Sochi to close the Winter Olympics. Smiling for the world’s cameras and bathing in the glow of an international event when he’d just ordered an invasion of another country showed a new level of cynicism on Putin’s part. Yet some people still try to say that sport and politics don’t mix.

As if to underline the extent to which Putin was mocking the West, it was later revealed that Russia had been operating a major doping scandal at the Sochi Winter Olympics.

Following the attack on eastern Ukraine, the West did expel some Russian diplomats and apply some half-hearted sanctions against the country. But big business ensured that international cooperation with Russia continued. And when it comes to big money and prestige, nothing beats the Football World Cup.

In 2010, when Russia had been awarded the 2018 World Cup, a few questions were raised about the transparency of the process, and suggestions were made that money had changed hands. But, as with much involving Russian business, due diligence appears to have been less than thorough. But then four years before the tournament was due to be held, Russia committed an international crime against Ukraine. Surely there were grounds for asking that Russia had forfeited its right to hold the World Cup? If Ukraine qualified for the tournament, could its national team be expected to play in Russia? Why not move the tournament to a country which already had all the infrastructure in place to run it?

The decision by FIFA, international football’s governing body, to press ahead with holding the tournament in Russia was not simply an example of the organisation putting profit above any question of morality. Now we had the Russian dictator being given the chance to preen himself on the biggest world stage, all the while laughing at the naivety of the West. If following all the earlier warning signs the western world was still kow-towing in this way to Putin, no wonder he assumed in 2022 that an all-out attack on Ukraine would not meet a firm rebuff from the West.

Of course, the Western reaction to the full-scale invasion was tougher than before, and underestimating that was clearly one of Putin’s many mistakes over the invasion. But two and a half years on there have been hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by Putin’s war; millions of Ukrainians are still living in Europe as refugees; and the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office maintains that the Russians have carried out 100,000 war crimes in Ukraine, including multiple examples of the torture, rape and murder of civilians.

For years many decision-makers in the West have treated Russia like a “normal, Western country”, and Putin like a politician. Russia has not become a normal, westernised country, and Putin is not a politician. He’s a devious individual who is full of suspicion and, crucially, resentment.

Putin’s resentment has been ignored or misunderstood to the West’s peril. Growing up he was a little runt who was bullied by the other boys. He resented their strength, so took up judo. He then resented seeing his supposed superpower of a country, the USSR, disintegrate and subsequently be ignored by the West. And it’s this resentment that the West has ignored Russia which fuels so much of Putin’s thinking.

In Putin’s twisted mind, the West’s lack of attention to Russia has been turned into the West being ready to attack Russia. This totally ignores the lengths to which the West has gone to integrate Russia into the family of nations, such as by bringing Russia into the G8 (when Russia clearly didn’t have one of the world’s top eight economies) and NATO forming the NATO-Russia Council. And the little runt who took up judo to strike the first blow against the bullies has become the bully who has struck the first blow against his wrongly perceived enemy.

Despite being someone who loves football and who has spent their whole life studying Russia and trying not only to understand the country but to explain it to a world audience, I boycotted the 2018 World Cup. This may have been a pathetic little gesture. But had the countries which participated taken a similar action, or had FIFA had the balls to take away from Russia the honour of hosting the tournament, would Ukraine be in the situation it’s now in?