‘It makes me unbelievably sad that a country with such a great footballing tradition, that created so many stars has pulled out of a fair fight, preferring plots and intrigues behind the scenes. They could have played us on neutral ground and we would have found out who deserves to enter the championship. Well, it turned out differently! They were scared. The Polish team with Lewandowski no longer exists for me’. So said the former USSR footballer Oleg Romantsev. Putting it delicately though, it can’t be said that he was overjoyed that ‘Sborna’ as the Russian national squad is also called, was barred from the World cup in Qatar. Like millions of his fellow citizens. Football is a national passion in Russia and their league is one of the richest in Europe that attracts world stars.

Sanctions that impact the world of sport don’t just hit the recreation offered to the fans but above all aim at their national pride

WAR IN UKRAINE

A similar case is with the export of culture. The Bolshoi Ballet was certain up till a month ago that it would perform at London’s Royal Opera House. Now it’s looking for substitute venues, but European cultural institutes don’t want to know

For ‘Generation P’ the drama lies in losing its availability to Netflix, the inability to show off new styles on Instagram, or in buying the latest iPhone. Because it was obvious that these things made you better than your peers in provincial Novosybirsk or Kamchatka.

This was the reason why Mikhail Mishustin, Russian Prime Minister signed off a recent bill on ‘simultaneous importing’ that in practice would allow the cloning of world brands.

The government provided emergency relief for farmers and SMEs that are experiencing problems with the imposition of sanctions. It has activated low interest lines of credit.

The world is doing everything so that Russia should feel the effects of her invasion of Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin is doing what he can to make sure that the ordinary Russians doesn’t feel these effects.

Inflation and factory closures

It’s difficult to close one’s eyes when you get hammered in your pocket. The price of basic goods are rising by the day. "Novaya Gazeta" raged that only a few months ago in Saratov ,800g grammes of buckwheat had cost 62 roubles while today 170. Bread and butter have almost doubled in price. Clips showing the fight over packets of sugar in supermarkets have become cult viewing on the internet. Sugar is of fundamental importance in Russia namely to produce alcohol domestically.

Despite appearances, it is not the lack of access to Ikea or McDonald’s that hurts the ordinary Dmitri but galloping inflation and the fall is the standard of living and the spectre of unemployment.

The Russian economics ministry stated that the national inflation rate rose to 14.5 precent and is at its highest level for seven years. It was only during the last week that the weekly inflation rate of basic goods rose to the forecast inflation rate.

This means that for part of the population at least it’s not just the access to fashionable boutiques such as Gucci are closed, but to the chain stores such as LPP or H & M, which have in any case withdrawn from Russia.

The real drama can be seen in the closure of manufacturing centres. Closing jobs in fast food outlets, paid the minimum wage is not that painful as the closure of a large regional factory.

If Renault keep its word and halts its Russian production, it will be a huge blow to the ordinary Russian. The French have three production centres on the country one near Moscow and inTogliatti and Izhevsk. Together, they employ over 40,000.

It is estimated that there are around 20 million citizens living currently on the breadline.

Robbed fans

This brings us back to the subject of football. In 2018 the famous Luzhniki stadium in Moscow was full to brimming. The team mascot a wolf named Zabivaka, toured the stands. Russia was to open the World Cup which was to proceed shortly and eventually beat Saudi Arabia 5 nil.

It was the first tournament of its kind that was held in Eastern Europe which had been held simultaneously on two continents. It was also the most expensive in current football history. It cost USD 13bn and recovered barely half its costs. But it wasn’t about profits but showing its power.

The ordinary Russians adore football and state companies throw huge sums at the Russian sport on a domestic and international level as to give a cause for satisfaction. Zenit Saint Petersburg only, in this season alone bought Yuri Alberto for a negligible sum of 25 mln euros one that had exceeded the entire budget of the richest Polish club Legia Warsaw .

The best Russian clubs regularly played in European competitions and achieved considerable success. The could play on an equal footing with the best world clubs be they Spanish, English or Italian


FIFA in suspending ‘Sborna’ before such an important fixture with Poland and then eliminating the club drove the entire Russian society to paroxysms of fury. Russian social media are still fulminating with anger and mock the Poles that they did not deserve to advance and Russia was robbed.

The suspension of these clubs by UEFA such as Spartak Moscow or Zenit Saint Petersburg mean that the fans cannot show themselves in the West nor before visiting teams in home fixtures

Sanctions will hit the hedonists

‘On 29 March 2022, the Government of the Russian Federation passed Decree 506 on products, with regard to certain legislation of the Civil code of the Russian Federation dealing with the security of exclusive intellectual property rights that will be suspended. In accordance with this document, civil responsibility is excluded in cases when importers import products that avoid official channels of distribution’. This communique can be read on the Ministry of Industry and Trade website. This, in a roundabout way give tacit approval to clone products which had been withdrawn from the Russian market.

We have all heard of the famous Uncle Vanya who is to substitute for McDonalds or IDEA, designed to fil the gap for IKEA. We know of the sobbing Muscovite influencer who lost her followers and livelihood. She was consoled by the information that there is now a Russian Instagram- Rossgram .

Russia has had its own domestic brand copies of Western items. There’s a grocery discount chain Mere, that tried its hand in Poland. There’s a social medial portal VK the equivalent of Facebook and there’s Yandex that is meant to stand in for Google. A Lada car is far cheaper than a now-unavailable Porsche. You don’t have to spent the night at a Hyatt when there are many Russian hotels available.

There’s a problem with Russia’s ‘Generation P’ those who were born as Vladimir Putin was ascending the ladder of power. Its members simply are impatient. ‘Generation P’ was internationalist in outlook. They spoke in the same language with their global contemporaries. It was the universal language of liberal values. The motivation was also internationalist and it concentrated its efforts on an unlimited ordering of Jack Daniels on the rocks without cola at the highest level of lifestyle. The general motive force was hedonism. And the philosophical guidelines are so deeply postmodernist that practically it became non-existent, according to "Novaya Gazeta".

They highlighted their careers in their lives, to be able to use the money they earned as do those in the West. So loss of Western brands, the withdrawal of Western companies hurts the most. We ought to remember that the loss of Netflix, Adidas or a new BMW will be a problem for only a limited number of yuppies in Moscow or Saint Petersburg. In the 140 million strong Russian market, it’s a small group. To a resident of Polkanov in the Buriat Republic on the Mongolian border, won’t even notice the difference in what we say. Even if every brand withdrew in solidarity from Russia, he wouldn’t notice. But as Professor Robert Ciborowski, Rector of Białystok University points out, in the rise of the price of onions, or butter yes, he definitely would.

– Karol Wasilewski
– Translated by Jan Darasz