The Russians use sports as a propaganda tool and try to advance their own interests among Ukrainian youth. In the occupied territories of Ukraine, the aggressors have created the so-called “Russian Student Sports Union,” reported the National Resistance Center (NRC).
“(Russia) launched its tentacles on all the Ukrainian territories it managed to annex. Therefore, the other day in Donetsk Oblast, such a “union” was presented, which will unite young people around itself and brainwash them with its propaganda of greatness and power. As they say, all methods are acceptable,” NRC writes.
Athletics has always been an important part of any state’s international image, a tool of “soft power,” and for totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, it has become a weapon for propagating their own ideology, analysts say.
“For example, the 1934 World Cup and the 1936 Olympic Games played an important role in the propaganda of Italian fascists and German Nazis. Hitler and Mussolini wanted not only to organize and hold these sporting events in an exemplary manner, but also to show the world the winning results and “superiority” of their nations and political regimes over their competitors,” the text reads.
The USSR systematically used sports for the propaganda of communist ideology and the struggle against the “capitalist bloc” during the Cold War era. “The apogee of this confrontation was the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow, which were boycotted by 65 states in protest against the Soviet aggression in Afghanistan,” NRC writes.
Today, Russia uses identical methods to destroy Ukrainian identity in the occupied territories.
Cover: AP
