In February, I sat riveted as the Russian women's singles figure skating team imploded during the final free skate at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. I witnessed the despair of the gold medal favorite, Kamila Valieva, as her dreams evaporated in repeated (and highly uncharacteristic) falls. I was fascinated by the anger and frustration of the silver medalist, Aleksandra Trusova, who seemed angrier at losing the gold than happy about her own success at making the podium. I felt the insecurity and vulnerability of the gold medal winner and Olympic champion, Anna Shcherbakova, as she clutched her stuffed animal, alone in the kiss and cry area, her coaches preoccupied with her teammates’ breakdown and tirade. All three Russians’ performances were shadowed by positive drug tests and palpably abusive coaching. A week later, as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, the drama of the Olympic figure skating final appeared as another symptom of Russian president Vladimir Putin's quest to reconstitute the Russian (Soviet) empire and recapture the glory days of Russian (Soviet) dominance in Olympic sport.Russia's efforts to recapture lost glory have not exactly gone to plan. As I write this, Ukraine is retaking territory, the Russian army is in disarray, and Russian men are fleeing the country rather than be drafted to fight. Russia has been hit by an array of economic sanctions by Europe and the United States, and American and European weapons and money have been flowing into Ukraine. Since 2014, revelations of the state-run doping system and repeated and recurring cover-ups of it, internal crackdown on dissent, and especially the invasion of Ukraine in February have seen Russia's place in international sports unravel. Since the current war in Ukraine, Russians have been voted out or pressured to step down from leadership positions in international and European sports federations. Although the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has not called for such action and has not suspended its Russian members, the IOC has withdrawn Olympic honors from Russian officials, including Putin, and has called upon international sports organizations to move events out of Russia and ban Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials from competitions. As qualifiers for the Paris 2024 Olympics are getting underway, questions abound over whether Russian and Belarusian athletes will compete at those Games.This presumably was not how Putin planned Russia's return to the world stage after the break-up of the Soviet Union and Russia's “great depression” of the 1990s. Soon after coming to power, the Russian president set out to restore the Russian economy, reestablish influence in the former Soviet sphere, and reassert Russia as a global power. At the same time, Russia sought to recapture its reputation as a sporting force. In 2003, Moscow bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games. Having lost out to London, Russia set its sights on hosting the Winter Games in the Black Sea (summer) resort town of Sochi. Putin took a personal interest in expanding Russia's sports reputation, schmoozing and bribing his way into hosting large-scale international events.1 The apex of Russian power, influence, and reputation in international sport was the period between 2007 when Sochi won the bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympics and 2018 when Russian cities played host to the FIFA World Cup. During this time, several Russians were elected to boards and leadership positions in international federations. Mostly close allies of Putin, they represent a mix of former Olympic champions, sports functionaries, and oligarchs. These include billionaire Alisher Usmanov, who was elected president of the International Fencing Federation (FIE) in 2008 and who bankrolled the bid for the 2018 World Cup. There is also Sergey Soloveychik, who was elected president of the European Judo Union (EJU) in 2007.2 In 2016, the European Fencing Confederation (EFC) elected Stanislav Pozdnyakov, the five-time Olympic medalist, as its president. The steel tycoon Vladimir Lisin was appointed to the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) executive committee in 2013 and elected president of the organization in 2018. A career sports bureaucrat who served on the organizing committee for the 1980 Moscow Olympiad, Alexander Ratner, became general secretary of the European Shooting Confederation (ESC) in 2013 and served as a member of the ISSF council from 2014 before being elected its president in 2018.3 In 2021, Ratner was elected president of the ESC.4 Russian sports functionary Umar Kremlev became general secretary and member of the executive board of the International Boxing Association (IBA) and has served as president of the organization since 2021. These individuals promoted Russian power and influence in international sports, using their connections and money to help secure international competitions in Russia and ensure the dominance of Russian athletes.These efforts invite parallels with the Soviet push to assert power and influence in international sport. When they first entered the Olympic Movement in 1951, Soviet sports officials studied carefully the mechanisms of power and authority within the IOC. They noted the relationship between the IOC and the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) who organize Olympic sport in their own countries and the International Federations (IFs) who govern the individual sports. They saw in the convoluted system of international sports a way to break through the “Anglo-American” faction that dominated the IOC by bringing more Soviet-friendly NOCs into the movement and gaining leadership positions for Soviet and other socialist officials within the IFs. This was all designed to gain maximum cultural capital in international sports which could be used to pressure the IOC to accept proposals that would work to the Soviet advantage. They even went so far as to propose a radical reorganization of the IOC that would give NOCs and IFs a direct role in IOC decision-making. That proposal failed, but Soviet sports administrators achieved some success in stacking the IOC and IFs with friendly functionaries, eventually using their networks to secure the bid to host the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow.5These efforts raised the profile of Soviet sports officials and gave them influence within the Olympic Movement. Historically, the IOC has been resistant to boycotts and bans, and Soviet administrators exploited this reality for their own purposes. When many called for boycotts or bans after the Soviet invasion of Hungary, the IOC adopted a unanimous resolution expressing its “sorrow and regret” as “an organization concerned solely with sport” over the decision by “a small number of nations” to pull out of the Games for reasons “not in keeping with the Olympic ideal.”6 The IOC's myopic insistence that it represents sport outside of politics allowed Soviet officials to deflect their own actions and accuse others of bringing politics into the Games. When similar appeals were made after the 1968 invasion of Prague, the Czechoslovak member of the IOC, F. Kroutil, asked Soviet officials, “How will your sportsmen and athletes of other socialist countries that take part in the occupation of our country be received at the Olympic Games?”7 While they “lost” to the US on the medal podium, those athletes were received very well in Mexico City, where the Games went on despite the Mexican government's brutal massacre of student protestors weeks before the Opening Ceremonies.There is one major exception to this trend: the exclusion of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia because of their policies of segregation in sports.8 While the movement to ban South Africa from international sports achieved success thanks in-part to the contributions of newly independent states in Africa, Soviet representatives in the IOC and IFs were vocal supporters of that movement, because it lent credence to Soviet claims to support anticolonial movements at a time when the Cold War competition had moved to the “Third World.” Support for the anti-Apartheid movement also helped ensure that African nations would not boycott the 1980 Olympics. In arguing for South Africa's exclusion, Soviet representatives could couch their appeal within Olympic ideals that everyone should have the right to participate in sport free from racial discrimination. The Soviet reputation within the IOC had grown so much by the 1970s that when various groups around the world threatened to boycott the 1980 Summer Olympiad in Moscow, the IOC stood firmly behind the organizers. Even after the invasion of Afghanistan convinced Western nations to boycott the Games, the IOC blamed the US for bringing politics into their sacred movement and praised the Moscow Olympics as a triumph. In the 1980s, the relationship between the IOC and the Soviet Union grew under the presidency of Juan Antonio Samaranch, despite the boycott by the Soviet bloc of the Los Angeles Olympiad.Unlike their Soviet predecessors, Russian sports officials have not been able to maintain their influence and reputation, but until 2022 they were able to retain their participation in the Olympic Movement. From winning the bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympics to the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, Russia behaved as if its twin goals of reconquering the former Soviet Empire and reestablishing Russian dominance in the Olympics worked hand in hand. In 2008, while the opening ceremonies were going on in Beijing, Russian troops entered Georgia, and in 2014 before the Olympic cauldron in Sochi had been extinguished, they appeared in Ukraine. Russia was able to annex Crimea and conduct war in the Donbas seemingly with no consequences. That Russia went unpunished by the sports community makes sense given the IOC's historic propensity to award the Games to authoritarian governments despite their breaches of international conventions. The IOC let the “Nazi” Olympics go on, and the Winter Games in Beijing were held after revelations of Uighurs being forced into labor and reeducation camps. And of course, the Sochi Winter Olympics were held against a backdrop of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and brutal government crackdown on Muslim territories under the guise of securing the Games against possible terrorist threats. All of this must have convinced Putin that invading Ukraine again would likewise bear no consequences for Russia in the sporting world.The reaction by the IOC and international sports community to the February 2022 invasion defied those expectations. When IOC president Thomas Bach issued a statement calling for Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials to be barred from sports events and international competitions to be relocated from Russia, most European and international sports organizations complied. The International Ice Hockey Federation stripped Kazan, Russia of the right to host the 2023 World Championships, and nearly all the Olympic sports federations excluded Russian and Belarusian athletes from competitions. The treatment of Russian officials, however, has varied. Bach's recommendation specifically excluded Russian IOC members from the ban, and the IOC has deferred to the IFs on how they might deal with Russian and Belarusian sports functionaries in their organizations. As of early May, only seven IFs that govern Olympic sports had suspended Russian and Belarusian officials and/or their national federations.9 Some IFs and European federations have removed Russian officials from their governing boards and leadership positions, but others have not. Alisher Usamanov stepped down as president of the FIE after the European Union hit him with sanctions and is now facing a German fraud investigation.10 The FIE is now confronting severe financial pressures due to the absence of Usamanov and his yearly multimillion-dollar donation to the organization which historically covered the bulk of their budget in non-Olympic years.11 Steel magnate Vladimir Lisin remained president of the ISSF despite calls for him to step down until suffering a narrow defeat in the federation's November election.12 The International Boxing Association (IBA), already on the ropes with the IOC, having been suspended pending reforms to address financial and governance issues, remains under the leadership of Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev. Having reversed course to allow Russian athletes to compete under their own flag, the organization suspended the Ukrainian national federation and briefly signaled it would exclude Ukrainian athletes from competitions. The IBA later clarified that the suspension was only targeting the national federation and that athletes would not be excluded; however, the organization did so while arguing that Russian and Belarusian athletes should be allowed to compete as well. Under Kremlev, the association seems unlikely to address the corruption that led to their suspension in the first place.13The war has sparked debate throughout the Olympic Family over how to deal with Russian athletes and officials, and all arguments draw upon the same set of Olympic principles, demonstrating the ambiguity and malleability of Olympic ideals. The IOC stripped Russian political leaders, including Vladimir Putin, of the Olympic Order, because the invasion of Ukraine represented a “blatant violation of the Olympic truce.”14 Insisting that the ban on athletes and officials from competition constitutes “protective measures, not sanctions,” Bach asserted that the ban was necessary to safeguard the “integrity of competitions” during a time when “deep anti-Russian and anti-Belarusian feelings in so many countries following the invasion” threatened the safety of those athletes. When asked why Russia's IOC members were not suspended, Bach responded, “This war has not been started by the Russian people, the Russian athletes, the Russian Olympic Committee or the IOC members in Russia,” who, according to the convenient and obtuse Olympic maxim, serve as representatives of the IOC in their respective countries and not the other way around.15 At the meeting of the general assembly of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), the head of the Danish NOC, Hans Natorp, criticized what he sees as an “unbalanced” position of the IOC “sanctioning the athletes and allowing the politicians” to participate.16 Natorp represents one of a handful of NOCs who want to see Russia completely excluded from international sport. Others, like head of the United States Olympic Committee Sarah Hirshland, think “individual athletes should not be victims of whatever their individual government's, political or other, intentions are around the world” and that a way can be found for Russian and Belarusian athletes to eventually return to competitions.17 Bach has recently expressed the desire to find a way for those athletes who do not support the war to compete as neutrals.18 He has not speculated on how an athlete might express their opposition to the war at a time when even describing the “special military action” as a war could earn you a fine or jail time. Perhaps they could follow the example of former Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) secretary Anastasia Davydova, who decided to leave Russia for Dubai.19 It seems doubtful that many athletes would have the resources to leave Russia and still remain competitive in their sport.For their part, Russian officials see the sanctions, bans, and boycotts not as a response to Russian malfeasance but as evidence of Russophobia among western sports representatives. Denouncing the sanctions, they have been working to get themselves and their athletes reinstated. Having been removed as president of the European Fencing Confederation, Russian NOC president Stanislav Pozdnyakov called it “very regrettable that the European hysteria led to abolishing everything in regard to Russia, even such [a] noble sport as fencing.”20 Umar Kremlov's IBA issued a statement calling on international sports organizations to “keep sports and athletes away from politics,” allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete, and allow “no discrimination based on nationality.”21 Russian officials have also been establishing bilateral sports ties with non-Western nations and continuing to hold competitions to prepare for when they can “triumphantly return to the world stage.”22 Long-serving Russian IOC member Vitaly Smirnov expressed certainty that international sports could not do without Russian athletes for long. When Natorp walked out on Pozdnyakov's presentation at the ANOC general assembly, Smirnov remarked, “Where is Denmark in the table of the Olympic Movement and where is Russia?” He mused, “The Olympic Movement and the Olympic Games would calmly survive the absence of Denmark but the absence of the Russian Federation would be a blow.”23As members of the IOC, NOCs, and IFs debate the return of Russia and Belarus as full-fledged members of the international sporting community, the fate of their athletes remains up in the air. Right now, the big question is whether their athletes will be able to compete in the 2024 Paris Olympics. As qualifying competitions for those Games are soon to get underway, the continued absence of Russian and Belarusian athletes from those events could jeopardize their ability to make it to Paris. For those athletes in winter Olympic sports, there is a bit more breathing room, so could there be a “triumphant return” to the Olympic stage for the Russian women figure skaters? Having already missed out on the world championships in March, the three Olympians are entering new phases in their careers. Anna Shcherbakova had surgery earlier this year on her knee. Aleksandra Trusova, who took the silver in Beijing, has recently split from Eteri Tutberidze's controversial coaching group. Awaiting the verdict in the Russian Doping Agency's own investigation into the positive drug test from Beijing, Kamila Valieva captured victory at the Golden Skate of Moscow Grand Prix in October. Perhaps the Russian figure skaters can redeem the Russian system that broke down so spectacularly in Beijing and finally realize their Olympic dream in 2026. Perhaps, though, they will have aged out by then and will have to pass the torch to a younger generation. It seems that any Russian return to the Olympics would require an end to the war and massive changes in how the Russian sports system operates. I hold out hope for the former, but the latter seems a bridge too far in Putin's Russia.