The rocky road to the end of the war

Among the HMB community, there have been recent individual requests that HMBIA would apply sanctions to prevent Russian international fighters from competing. This is along the lines of the International Olympic Committee, which due to recent aggression recommends no participation of Russian or Belarusian athletes or officials. The request resulted in an extraordinary HMBIA summit of country representatives to discuss and decide upon.


The summit was held last Monday and the final proposal after a long debate was formed as “Russian and Belarussian athletes (with Russian or Belarussian citizenship) deprivation of the right to participate in international HMB tournaments until the ordinary General Assembly or until the IOC lifts the sanctions on Russian athletes”.


The voting was done as anonymous voting, so no one knows which countries voted what, except obviously for the countries which have been very verbal and open about their views and opinions, for or against the sanctions. The vote of Finland for example is open information as the Finnish buhurt organization Medieval Combat Sport Finland, being its partner member, honors and follows guidelines of the Finnish Olympic Committee.


The voting ended in the rejection of the proposal, by a close vote of 56% over 44%. This result came as a shock to many and has been widely speculated since. While yes, it is a sad result, I would say it would be wrong to interpret it as a general supporting vote for the ongoing invasion. Pretty much everyone seems to be condemning the war, although some seem to normalize it, and the willingness to take action for peace varies. But yes, the opinion seemed to be that while war should be condemned, the sanctions on athletes are not a supported action to help to end the war.


Being present in the meeting and participating in the debate before the voting clarified to me the worldwide situation in a surprising way. It was very interesting that so many countries, so many representatives, struggled to understand the purpose and goal of the sanctions altogether. How I see it is that way too little discussion and too little information sharing has been happening about what the sanctions are all about. There are so many misinterpretations and so much misunderstanding, and sorry to say, even naive views sometimes.


Let me ventilate a series of random thoughts here.


1) Olympic Committee sanctions for athletes are NOT about punishing. It is not about payback. It is obvious that Russian or Belarussian athletes are NOT to blame for this war. It is fair to even assume most of them are indeed against the war if they would have the freedom to do so and their country would not threaten them with punishment for stating an opinion openly.


2) An important part of sanctions is the attempt to enforce visibility and awareness of the situation at hand. Russian people are currently being prevented from seeing what’s happening. The access to objective media is restricted, the national television pours out only news supporting Putin’s narrative for the unjustified war. The wished effect of sanctions is for the reality to reach people.


3) Proposed sanctions for athletes are NOT an attempt to get rid of the competition. While you can never know everyone’s motives for certain, I personally see the comments like this as a bit paranoid.


4) About the worry of sanctions having a reverse effect on people. The fear that instead of athletes turning against their government they would turn to support it. While I do recognize the flow of thought, it sounds truly absurd that a person, being prevented from competing internationally, could start to support the killing of thousands of civilians?


5) No, you can not isolate international sports from politics. It’s not possible. By closing your eyes, you take a stand. By just not taking any action at all, you are not neutral. Sorry, you don’t have that luxury. So, by objecting to sanctions you end up supporting the war. Yes, there are a lot of unfortunate side effects, but we must do everything possible to end this war now, and then get back to normal as soon as peace has been achieved.


6) While any and all wars are awful, it shows really bad judgment to categorize this as one among the many. With the number of refugees fleeing the war exceeding two million in two weeks, the magnitude of the tragedy is overwhelming.


7) In my personal opinion, the sanctions are actually a plea for help. The world needs Russian people to help to end the war. Only Russian people can do it, the monster can not be stopped from outside. Ukraine is playing time by resisting, but the change of leadership in Russia by the Russians is the only real solution.