A T-72 tank roared into the jump at full speed, launching several feet into the air. “Ooooohhhh!” several spectators yelled as it slammed back down so hard its gun barrel nearly hit the ground. A second T-72 followed behind, but suddenly everyone’s attention was directed behind them as strong winds ripped the metal-and-tarpaulin roof off the grandstands. The spectators climbed over the barriers to escape as rain poured down.
This was the tank biathlon, a sport devised by Russia in 2013, ostensibly to allow its own tank forces and those of other countries to test their preparedness and equipment. But it also serves as a patriotic spectacle and a show of military might held with an eye on the west. It’s part of the huge Army Games taking place across Russia and Kazakhstan, which also include competitions among jet fighters, air-defence systems, artillery and paratroopers. More than 3,000 personnel are taking part from Russia and 18 friendly countries, such as Angola, Venezuela, Serbia and several former Soviet republics.
Dmitry Panin, a doctor who had come with his wife and a friend on a “patriotic impulse”, said the competition was a display of military prowess and a way to “unify the nation”. “It’s to raise our country’s status, to show that we are a world power and will remain so,” he added.
As the deafening reports of tank shots boomed across the field, Nikolai Kudryavtsev, who once served in a tank brigade himself, said: “It shows mastery – it shows who’s better prepared among these countries. Nato refused to come because they’re afraid.”
Russia has found itself at the centre of several scandals in recent weeks, provoking outrage abroad but defiance at home. First, sporting authorities suspended the Russian track and field team and almost banned the entire country from the Rio de Janeiro Olympics following findings of state-sponsored doping. Then US officials and experts suggested the Kremlin was most likely behind an email hack that showed the Democratic national committee’s desperation that Hillary Clinton should triumph over Bernie Sanders in the battle for the Democrats’ presidential nomination. The furore over the emails was a boost for the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, who has previously spoken of his admiration for the leadership qualities of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and intimated he would move to lift sanctions on Moscow.
Responding to the doping scandal, Putin promised reforms but also rejected the accusations as “interference of politics in sport” and the track team ban as “open discrimination”. The sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, has repeatedly argued that Russia is being singled out for what is a worldwide problem. The foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said he could not respond to the email hack suspicions without using four-letter words.
As their officials lashed out on national television at the west for its alleged prejudices and attacks on the country, many Russians expressed similar opinions. In a survey published last week by state pollster VTsIOM, 55% said the accusations of mass doping were groundless and the result of a “political hit job” by Russia’s Olympic competitors. Another 31% said doping existed in other countries and punishing only Russia was an “injustice”.
A whopping 89% supported the actions of Putin, who has dismissed officials named in World Anti-Doping Agency investigations but said further evidence must be presented to back the accusations. A survey by the independent Levada Centre, to be released on Monday, showed 71% thought the agency’s evidence of systematic doping by Russia was not convincing; 83% disapproved of talks about banning Russia from the Olympics.
“Of course, it’s politics,” said Grigory Klimov, a former athletics coach, when asked about the doping scandal. He was in the stands at Stars 2016, a track meet for Russia’s banned athletes, which the media dubbed an alternative Olympics. “Sanctions aren’t working. We are surviving and even flourishing. So how can they get us? Take away the Olympics from us!”
Klimov recalled the US and Soviet Olympic boycotts of the 1980s. Now Russians are again “upset” over big sport, he said. “It’s not fair. There shouldn’t be collective responsibility,” he added. “There should be a presumption of innocence. How can I answer for my comrade? How do I know what he took?”
The coach Alexander Tsyplakov similarly drew a parallel with the cold war, which he said had never ended: “Cold war, hot war and information war. There’s always victims and ruined fates.” Tsyplakov said the doping accusations had been made up, expressing an increasingly widespread belief that a plot is afoot to deprive Russia of the 2018 World Cup. “It’s propaganda – they need to get at Russia to take away the World Cup,” said Kudryavtsev, the former tank brigade soldier.
His words suggested a standoff with the west was very much alive, as was a lingering sense of resentment. “Russia for its entire history has never kneeled to anyone. Now the Americans think they’re the fucking best,” he said. “Russia is a great country, but [Barack] Obama spits on it. Obama is a monkey and an ass.” Like many Russians, Kudryavtsev’s opinion of Trump was much higher, since the candidate “says he’ll be friends with Russia”.
An April YouGov poll found that the only G20 country where Trump was viewed more favourably than Clinton was Russia. Whereas Clinton is associated with the failed “reset” of relations with Russia in 2009 and the Nato bombing in Libya, Trump is seen as a break in these tensions, according to pollsters.
The hacking scandal has not been covered widely in the Russian media, which is dominated by state television channels, but when told about the email hacking suspicions Kudryavtsev called them “nonsense”. According to Valery Fyodorov, head of VTsIOM, Russians instinctively distrust the west after the booms in poverty and crime during the US-style market reforms of the 1990s, as well as the Nato bombing of Russian ally Serbia in 1999. Western criticism can even be taken as proof of Russia taking the proper course, he said.
“We think the west is a very hypocritical force that hides its intentions behind pretty words,” Fyodorov said. “That’s our main construct, and it’s that way for the majority of Russians … Since [the 1990s] we take the messages of the west as their opposite. If the west praises us, that means we are doing something not right, because enemies don’t praise, and if they praise us we are doing something against our interests.”
But according to Lev Gudkov, head of the Levada Centre, Russians’ anti-western sentiments are the result of a “besieged fortress” mentality the government has promoted for its own legitimation. The tank biathlon and Army Games are one of several martial events to have gained prominence in recent years, along with the huge parade on Red Square for Victory Day and the celebration of the annexation of Crimea. “I don’t remember such an intensive militaristic manufacturing of public opinion, not even in Soviet times,” Gudkov said.
The rejection of doping accusations and the ignorance over the hacking scandal were a result of the coverage of state television, he said, the main source of news for Russians. “We only see the effects of this propaganda, especially in the foreign sphere. Here it is built on a confrontation with the west – in conditions of crisis it’s the only way to facilitate the unity of society … It helps them come to terms with their living standards and not blame the authorities. If it’s war, it’s war, and you need to support the leadership.”
