FINA Must Remove 2022 World Championships from Russia After Ukraine Invasion

On Thursday, Russia, in spite of its assurances that it would not, launched an offensive against neighboring Ukraine. At least 57 have been killed and 170 others injured according to an update on Thursday by Ukraine’s Minister of Healthcare Oleh Lyashko.

Russia has become an international pariah, and the cost to the country’s citizens will be high – in lives and in money after the western world has unleashed substantial financial penalties upon the country. The Russian stock marked plummeted 33% on Thursday, its biggest-ever drop, as Russian President Vladimir Putin tells his country’s investors that they must pay their part for this war in lost wealth.

And why? Because he feels like Ukraine belongs to him, and Russia, and his legacy. As former American soldier and politician Jason Kander said on Thursday: “19 year old Ukrainian boys and 19 year old Russian boys are going to die because of Putin’s futile search for immortality through “legacy.””

What does this have to do with swimming? FINA, the world governing body for sport, is planning to host two of its major 2022 competitions in the country: the World Junior Swimming Championships and the Short Course World Swimming Championships.

In fact, with legs of the FINA Artistic Swimming World Series and FINA Diving World Series coming up from April 8-10, FINA will take at least four trips to Russia this year.

The awarding of these events was always questionable for reasons more directly related to sports: Russia was supposed to be barred from hosting international sporting events because of the failure of their doping system, a threat that was ultimately proved empty.

But now, with the invasion and bloodshed in Ukraine, FINA has another reason.

It’s not that Russia is the first country to be involved in armed conflict in the last decade. The United States and others have been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq for nearly 20 years. China and India have been involved in border skirmishes over the last two years and have resulted in at least 24 deaths (and as many as 60 deaths, depending on which side is to be believed).

But those military actions all had reasons, be them good reasons or bad reasons. They weren’t the unilateral decision of a deranged dictator citing a false revisionist history to describe an inalienable right to another sovereign country’s allegiance.

Sport governing bodies like FINA can’t take sides in every international conflict. That would be an endless spiral. But some actions are so egregious as to warrant it.

Putin will, of course, assure the world of the safety of athletes, including those from the Ukraine, at the events his country hosts. But he also said that claims in January that Russia would invade Ukraine were ‘ridiculous.’ The whims of Putin cannot be trusted.

SwimSwam reached out to Ukraine’s best active swimmer Mykhailo Romanchuk, and he said he didn’t want to discuss the events in his home country and their future hosting, because this war is about more than swimming, it is about peoples’ lives.

Romanchuk won silver in the 1500 and bronze in the 800 at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.

And he’s right: the hosting of swimming competitions seems silly and trite in a time where dozens have lost their lives and where many more could in the coming days and weeks.

But swimming is also the only avenue that we have to put pressure on Russia, to alert them that these actions are not acceptable in a peaceful global community. It is the only thing that FINA can do that matters, it is the only thing that Romanchuk can do that matters, and it is the only thing that I can do that matters.

Will FINA move? Probably not immediately. The governing body, which has already been locked in a quagmire of moving meets driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, won’t react until they see what each country’s next moves are. Brent Nowicki, the new CEO, is an American, while Husain Al-Musallam, the new President, is a Kuwaiti. Kuwait, incidentally, stands to profit dramatically from the conflict: oil accounts for nearly half of the country’s GDP, and the conflict has already sent the price of oil skyrocketing, peaking at $102-a-barrell on Thursday.

But Al-Musallam of all people should appreciate what’s happening in Ukraine, which is reminiscent of Saddam Hussain’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait at a time when he was a captain with Kuwait Airways.

Ukraine, meanwhile, has blocked all male citizens between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country in the event that they need to be conscripted for a military response. Romanchuk is currently training in Ukraine.

FINA is already in a competition with the International Swimming League (ISL) for the hearts of athletes. The ISL is owned by one Konstantin Grigorishin, who was born in the Soviet Union and obtained Ukrainian citizenship amid a tax dispute with Russia. Russia’s military action is wildly unpopular in most of the world, and it is going to be a tough pitch to convince athletes to attend the events in that country.

That’s not to mention the technical difficulties that could come with hosting, and paying vendors or federations, if some of the most severe financial sanctions come to fruition, including removing Russia from the SWIFT financial system.

FINA must remove its events from Russia. It’s the right thing to do for its athletes, for the sport of swimming, and for the people of Ukraine.