PM Tony Abbott announces Australia will open an embassy in Kiev, and will consider further assistance to Ukraine.
This is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts us, Vlad. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool, File) Source: AP
THIS might just hurt Russia more than any economic sanctions.
European Union officials are so upset at Russia's belligerent behaviour in Ukraine that there is now talk of the EU banning footballers from participating in the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.
The decision to make Russia the 2018 host was made at the same FIFA session which awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. The latter tournament has had a dozen different controversies hanging over it, and was always the problem child of the two. But suddenly, it appears Qatar, for all its dramas, may just throw up a better football tournament than Russia.
The Times of London reports that a ban on European players would be part of a wider package of sanctions designed to curb the behaviour of President Putin and Moscow's military involvement in Ukraine, which includes Russian military incursions and its supplies of arms to separatists.
The budget for the tournament is expected to be A$21 billion, which is a fraction of the $210 billion for Qatar. It's also less than half the $57 billion for this year's Sochi Olympics (whose main stadium, used for the opening and closing ceremonies, will be used as a football stadium in 2018).
If top European players were not permitted to play at he 2018 World Cup, it would be devastating to the quality of football and quite possibly interest levels among both the public and sponsors. But perhaps the biggest blow, from a Russian perspective, would be to Russian prestige.
Russian President Vladimir Putin could be just a face in the crowd if the 2018 World Cup is reduced to a joke by the withdrawl of European stars. (AP Photo/RIA Novosti, Alexei Druzhinin, Presidential Press Service) Source: AP
There's an interesting parallel here. Many of the world's sporting powers, including the USA, boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980 over Russia's invasion of Afghanistan. Russia was a closed society then. In a pre-social media and pre-internet era, Russian authorities were able to spin all sorts of wonderful half-truths about the quality and competitiveness of those Games.
But there would be no spinning the truth here. If the EU bans European players, the tournament would be a debacle. Remember that Germany are champions, and that the Netherlands were probably the second best team despite losing to Argentina in the semi-final. Remember that Spain won the 2010 Cup and that – who knows? – even England may put a decent team on the field by 2018. Western Europe remains the powerhouse of world football.
Russia would be miffed not to be in the World Cup Source: Supplied
The threat to boycott the World Cup comes ahead of a NATO summit in Wales tomorrow, with relations between Russia and the West reportedly more tense now than at any time since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In addition to as a World Cup boycott, the Times reports that fresh sanctions against Russia may include a ban on all Russian state-owned companies raising finance in the EU, as well as freezing Russian athletes, artists and businessmen out of international sporting, ¬cultural and economic events.
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