Thread by @SlavaMalamud

This thread is for all the beautiful souls who want to enjoy their hockey in peace. For those innocents who just want to escape into the pure world of sports and appreciate their favorite athlete without all those nasty politics.
There is a straight line between these two images.

So, let's go back in time for a bit, to 2014 when the picture on the left was taken.
This was immediately after Russia had annexed Crimea and, drunk on its rediscovered imperial ambitions, started the war in Donbas. Except, back then, Russia wasn't yet acknowledging it...

According to Russia's official narrative, Donbas had itself rebelled against the "Nazi" government in Kyiv. This was in no way true. Whatever separatist pro-Russian forces had existed in Donbas before, they were directly funded and controlled by Moscow.
And in 2014...

... Moscow had ignited the conflict by sending its operative "Strelkov" (real name: Igor Girkin), who had engineered the Crimea takeover, to organize an armed conflict, with a direct (though not officially acknowledged) involvement of 🇷🇺 troops
This is when the war REALLY started

Russia had successfully managed to obfuscate this and to even blame Ukraine for the violence and deaths that occurred. To that end, it began a big propaganda push, called "Save Children From Fascism", which distilled their lies into a simple narrative:

"Ukraine is taken over by a Nazi regime that has decided to racially exterminate Russian speakers in the East. They are literally killing children in order to ethnically cleanse the region. Russia is a benevolent provider of humanitarian help to civilians and resistance fighters"

This was the narrative that Russian celebrities pushed in 2014 and 2015. By far, the most famous of them was Alexander Ovechkin, the beloved whacker of pucks idolized in the US and Russia. He willingly and eagerly took part in a campaign designed to absolve Russia from blame, ...

... to place it on Ukrainians and to help Russia recruit volunteers to continue fighting in Donbas. Ovechkin slandered Ukraine and did his part to keep the embers of war burning.
But he did more than that. He helped to entrench the "Ukraine is killing Donbas children" line...

... in the minds of Russians. This is literally the No. 1 go-to propaganda line of Russian trolls and media pundits. This is what the Russian powerlifter said in her reply to Schwarzenegger: that Ukraine has been engaging in child slaughter for 8 years.
This was done by Ovechkin.

The horrible blood libel on Ukraine has permeated the Russian consciousness for 8 years, and the result is that Russian soldiers in 2022 are launching rockets at Ukrainian civilians, thinking they are retaliating for all those dead children.
And people die.

The missile that has killed dozens at the Kramatorsk train station today had the words "For the children" written on it. It was aimed to cause as many civilian casualties as possible. As vengeance. As terrorism.
Russians have been radicalized by propaganda for 8 years.

Many truly think they are fighting Nazism and saving or avenging children.
Think about that the next time you are donning your No. 8 jersey and whooping it up in the stands. Athletes are not only athletes. When they lend their names to a cause, they exert a powerful influence.

Absolving them from responsibility for that influence is wrong on many levels.
You have been doing it, North American sports fans and media, since 2014.
So, while this is not entirely on your conscience, you share some responsibility for this, too.