When it comes to Russia’s obscene war against Ukraine, the blame and punishments are simultaneously too narrowly and too widely distributed.
On one hand, no matter what several news networks insist on calling it, this isn’t just “Putin’s war.” On the other hand, the All England Tennis Club is wrong to ban Russian players from The Championships at Wimbledon this summer.
First, Vladimir Putin. There can be no doubt he rules Russia as a virtual dictator, no matter how many quasi-democratic trappings he uses to festoon his reign. This war, this world-shaking indecency, is ultimately his decision and his alone. If he did not order it, it would not be occurring. If he ordered it to stop at 6 p.m. this evening, it would stop. Period. Putin is the one with bizarre dreams of hegemonic glory. Putin is the one with the same murderous outlook as Stalin and Lenin. Putin is the one with a soul dark as pitch.
Then again, Putin is not carrying out the particular, individual acts of barbarity that are occurring. Putin may be ordering the shelling of civilians, but it is individual Russian soldiers who are committing the rapes, who are torturing people, who are tying civilians’ hands behind their backs and executing them in front of their relatives. Those soldiers are individually as guilty of crimes against humanity as is the thug in the Kremlin.
Meanwhile, if even Western and independent polls repeatedly show strong majority support within Russia for the war and for Putin, this is more evidence that the rot of the souls and consciences evident in Putin’s actions and in those of the soldiers also extends, albeit possibly in lesser degrees, to tens of millions of ordinary Russians. This is not just Putin’s war — it is a collective war crime committed by the Russian nation.
Even acknowledging this reality, though, does not make it sensible or right to ban individual Russian athletes from championship competition in individual sports. Wimbledon is not the Olympics. Daniil Medvedev, ranked second in the world, is not playing for, or in the name of, Russia. His parents live in France. He has lived mostly overseas (from Russia) since turning 18, and he has complained about the lack of support from the Russian Tennis Federation. And the very day after Russia invaded Ukraine, Medvedev and fellow Russian star Andrey Rublev both bravely denounced the war. These players who happened to be born in Russia are no more responsible for the war and deserve no more punishment or ostracism for it than do any of us here in the United States.
The entire ethos of the Western world is based on individual rights and individual responsibility. Our faith might make us care about and work on behalf of a broader community, but we are not our brothers’ keepers.
If anything, Wimbledon — two months in advance, mind you, without knowing what the situation in Ukraine will be on the June 27 opening day of The Championships — is doing more harm than good for the cause of peace. Medvedev is in his prime and likely to win lots of matches this year, with a good chance of reaching the finals. Wimbledon is denying him, and the world, a platform from which he can plead again for peace.
Deciding how to mete out punishment for the war is a topic too ambitious for this one column. Nonetheless, it should be clear that individual sports stars, especially ones of such goodwill as Medvedev and Rublev, should not suffer because of Putin’s perfidy.
