"Neutral" Russian athlete Anna Smirnova at the World Fencing Championship in 2023 managed to disqualify Ukrainian Olga Harlan for refusing to shake hands. It almost costed the Ukrainian champion a place at the 2024 Olympic Games. Fencing was one of the first sports in which the International Federation returned Russian athletes to the competition after the ban due to the war in Ukraine.
What is behind such audacious behavior of the Russians and their return to the big sport? The episode "Sport" from the series "The Big Russian Lie" shows how the Russian lobby and money worked in the sports world for years.
The speakers of the episode were:
- Olympic fencing champion Olga Kharlan;
- hockey player, Olympic champion Dominik Hasek;
- tennis player Serhii Stakhovsky;
- Nick Ames, sports correspondent of The Guardian;
- director and producer of sports documentaries Alex Gale;
- Yevhen Pronin, Acting President of the Athletics Federation of Ukraine (2021-2023);
- chief editor of the TV channel "Suspilne Sport" Oleksiy Mandziy;
- sports journalist Valentin Shcherbachov;
- Yale University professor Jason Stanley;
- the founder of the info-hygiene initiative "How not to become a vegetable" Oksana Moroz.
Watch other episodes of the Great Russian Lie cycle:
The fiction that the world believed: How Russia REWRITES history in its favor | BIG RUSSIAN LIE #1 - • Вигадка, у яку повірив...
Great Russian literature is FAKE!? How the Kremlin uses it for war | BIG RUSSIAN LIES #2
How the Kremlin pushes its «Russian world» using cinema | BIG RUSSIAN LIES #3
«Swan Lake» on the ruins: how does Russia loot art? | BIG RUSSIAN LIES #4
"NTV", "Russia 24" and "Dozhd" - how does the Kremlin LIMITS the media? | BIG RUSSIAN LIES #5
"The Great Russian Lie" is a series of films about a country living in an atmosphere of informational sanitation, in which the narratives of Russian propaganda are debunked.
For centuries, Russia has used history, literature, cinema, art, sports, and media as instruments of propaganda to advance political interests. It calls itself the heir of Kievan Rus and justifies claims to the lands of neighboring states.
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