Russia observed a national day of mourning on Sunday after a massacre in a Moscow concert hall killed 137 people, the deadliest attack in Europe to have been claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.

President Vladimir Putin has vowed to punish those behind the “barbaric terrorist attack,” saying four gunmen trying to flee to Ukraine had been arrested.

Kyiv has strongly denied any connection to the attack, with President Volodymyr Zelensky accusing Putin of trying to shift the blame.

“The whole country is in mourning with those who lost their loved ones in this inhumane tragedy,” public television channel Russia 24 said on Sunday morning.

Putin, in his only public remarks on the attack, made no reference to IS’s claims of responsibility.

At least 137 people, including three children, were killed when camouflaged gunmen stormed the Crocus City Hall, in Moscow’s northern suburb of Krasnogorsk, and then set fire to the building on Friday evening.

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But not all of Putin’s pre-election news coverage went as planned.

Ukraine scored drone attacks against Moscow and Russian oil facilities, and anti-Kremlin fighters made their presence felt on Russian soil.

Putin’s nuclear threat on Wednesday – the second in as many weeks – was measured. In a pre-recorded television interview he said Russia’s nuclear forces were ready “from a military-technical point of view” and touted them as the most advanced in the world.

(Al Jazeera)

His comments, made six days after Sweden officially joined NATO as its 32nd member, were mild compared with a warning two weeks ago after French President Emmanuel Macron left open the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine.

“They must realize that we also have weapons that can hit targets on their territory. All this really threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons and the destruction of civilization. Don’t they get that?” Putin said on February 29.

Putin is running for a third consecutive six-year term.

He has passed constitutional amendments suspending a ban on more than two consecutive terms for himself personally. It allows him to rule until 2036 and has led both Russian and Western critics to label his continuing to hold office as illicit.

In October, the Council of Europe described his presidency as a “de facto dictatorship” and urged its member states to “recognize Putin as illegitimate”.

Russian crawl

Russian forces continued to make marginal advances on the eastern front for a fourth straight week after the fall of Avdiivka on February 17, but the pace of these advances has slowed considerably, suggesting Ukraine has managed to absorb Russian momentum.

On Friday, geolocated footage showed they entered the village of Tonenke and advanced towards Berdychi, both west of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region. Russian forces had already been on the edges of both settlements a week earlier.

Ukraine’s Tavria Group of forces, which is fighting in the area, said this front had stabilised.

“The advance has actually stopped. The Russian military is making small movements in this direction,” spokesperson Dmytro Lykhovyi said.

There were other minor Russian advances in Donetsk. Russian forces have been trying to roll back Ukrainian gains west of Bakhmut, and on Sunday, geolocated footage showed they had entered the village of Ivanivske.

Russian forces captured the village of Shevchenko, southeast of the city of Donetsk, on March 10 and the following day advanced in several places along the front in the area.

Towards the northern end of the front, geolocated footage showed that Russian forces approached the village of Terny from the east and reached the outskirts of Synkivka, two settlements in Donetsk and Kharkiv, respectively.

On the whole, though, these advances were measured in hundreds of meters (hundreds of yards), and the overall shape of the front remained unchanged.

What seems to continue to be instrumental in Russia’s minor successes is the use of glide bombs. These are normally massive conventional inertial bombs carrying 675kg (nearly 1,500lb) of explosives, fitted with fins and tails to fly farther and strike with greater accuracy. The German tabloid Bild reported that Russia is now mass-producing the weapons.

Russian military reporters said Russia also produced an improved glide bomb design this year, including engines and satellite guidance systems that increased its range from 40-70km to 95km (25-45 miles to 60 miles).

These powered bombs enable Russian planes dropping them to fly farther away from the front, reducing their vulnerability to Ukrainian air defenses, which claimed 15 aircraft in February and early March.

Ukrainian leap

While holding the front more or less steady, Ukraine focused on striking deep inside Russia.

On Saturday, several explosions were recorded in Rostov, less than 100km (60 miles) from the Ukrainian border, with at least one geolocated to a Beriev plant repairing and refurbishing A-50 radar and reconnaissance planes.

Ukraine has targeted these planes, destroying two this year, because they spy on Ukrainian positions and give fighter-bombers their coordinates.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed on Saturday that it had shot down all 47 drones over four border regions, including Rostov.

On Tuesday, Ukraine again sent a large salvo of drones – this time targeting energy infrastructure. Russia’s Defence Ministry said it shot down 58.

Ryazan Governor Pavel Malkov said one drone struck the Ryazan refinery, 180km (110 miles) southeast of Moscow and about 500km (310 miles) from the Ukrainian border, starting a fire.

Ukrainian news outlet Suspilne quoted Security Service sources as saying two further refineries had been targeted, in Rostov and St Petersburg, as well as two airfields. There was no evidence that those attacks had succeeded.

(Al Jazeera)

Ukraine’s military intelligence said pro-Ukrainian Russian forces had staged a border incursion on Tuesday, clashing with Russian forces in border villages in Belgorod and Kursk.

The Russian Volunteer Force and Freedom of Russia Legion are anti-Putin paramilitaries that first attacked Russia in March 2023. Russian sources first denied the incursion, then claimed to have repelled it.

Whether it succeeded in the past week, Ukraine has been following through on tactics that have succeeded in the past, striking oil refineries and sinking or disabling as much as half of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

But in interviews with Western media, Ukrainian fighters on the front lines are raising the alarm about shortages of ammunition as United States military aid remains frozen in a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. The latest such warning came in Germany’s Der Spiegel news magazine on Tuesday when Ukrainian servicemen warned they could not hold out forever under current conditions.

Even Ukraine’s new commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskii, warned on Wednesday that “there is a threat of enemy units advancing deep into our battle formations.”

“Ukrainian shortages of ammunition and other war materiel resulting from delays in the provision of US military assistance may be making the current Ukrainian front line more fragile than the relatively slow Russian advances in various sectors would indicate,” wrote the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

Ukraine’s European allies have been trying to make up for the US shortfall. Britain announced it would spend $160m buying 10,000 drones for Ukraine.

Czech officials said they had raised enough money from partners to buy 300,000 artillery shells from around the world for Ukraine.

(Al Jazeera)

The Czech Republic is leading an effort to locate 800,000 artillery shells outside Europe and deliver them to Ukraine. Germany, which refrains from sending its medium-range Taurus missile to Ukraine because Russia said it would consider it an escalation, was reportedly discussing a plan to send the missiles to Britain as replacements for Storm Shadow missiles Britain would send to Ukraine.

The administration of US President Joe Biden said it was sending $300m of urgently needed military aid cobbled together from savings in the US defense budget. But none of this makes up for the absence of $60.1bn in military aid the US was planning to send in 2024.

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Russia’s goals in Ukraine remain unchanged and there will be no peace until they are achieved, President Vladimir Putin has said in his first end-of-year news conference since the offensive began.

The event on Thursday comes days after Putin announced that he will run in the March 2024 presidential election, in which the 71-year-old leader is almost certain to win a fifth term. He has been in power for 24 years, including his prime ministerial stint, and a victory next year will see him remain president until 2030.

Fielding questions from the public and the media in Moscow, the Russian leader said peace will be possible after “denazification, demilitarisation and a neutral status” of Ukraine – something he has repeated since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia alleges that Ukraine’s government is heavily influenced by “radical nationalist” and neo-Nazi groups, which Kyiv and the West dispute. Putin has also consistently demanded that Ukraine remain neutral and not join the NATO military alliance.

“As for demilitarisation, they don’t want to negotiate, so we are then forced to take other measures, including military measures,” Putin said.

“Either we agree or we need to resolve [the issue] by force,” he added.

Putin said there are some 617,000 Russian soldiers currently in Ukraine, including about 244,000 who were called up to fight alongside professional Russian military forces. But there was no current need for further mobilization of reservists, he added.

He said an estimated 486,000 people had so far signed up voluntarily as contract soldiers, on top of the 300,000 people called up last year, and “the flow is not diminishing”.

Last December, in a break from tradition, Putin canceled the event. It was the first time in a decade he did not hold the conference.

This year, key themes of the conference were the fighting in Ukraine, payments to soldiers and their families and the economy.

‘A tragedy’

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Putin said Ukraine had lost some of its best troops in an attempt to secure a foothold on the east bank of the Dnipro in the Kherson region. “It is a tragedy, I believe, for them,” he said.

As the war approaches the end of its second year, Ukraine has achieved only small gains from a counteroffensive that began in June.

Russia, however, has also made no tangible progress since capturing the city of Bakhmut at heavy cost in May. It occupies about a sixth of Ukraine’s territory but does not fully control any of the four Ukrainian regions it claimed last year as part of Russia.

On the ongoing war and relations with the West, Putin said: “The unbridled desire to creep towards our borders, taking Ukraine into NATO, all this led to this tragedy … They forced us into these actions.”

Meanwhile, on Russia’s relations with China, he said, “the level of our ties with China is at an all-time high”.

Putin also said it was important that United Nations mechanisms, such as the veto power of permanent member states of the UN Security Council, remained in place.

Asked by a Turkish journalist about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, he said he hoped to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in early 2024.

And commenting on new Argentinian President Javier Milei’s plan to dollarise his country’s economy, Putin said it risked jeopardizing the country’s sovereignty.

At the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, Putin said he was not against Russians competing, but that the country should ponder whether it should if the event is designed to portray Russian sport as “dying”.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) last week said qualifying athletes from Russia and Belarus – who had been banned from competing internationally following the invasion of Ukraine – could take part in the Games as neutrals without flags, emblems or anthems.

“We still need to carefully analyze the conditions the IOC has put forward,” Putin said. “If the IOC’s artificial conditions are designed to cut off the best Russian athletes and portray at the Olympics that Russian sport is dying, then you need to decide whether to go there at all.”

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In a recent article, Ellis Cashmore raised the provocative question of whether or not we should lift the ban on Russian sport instituted as a result of the invasion of Ukraine. Cashmore advances a number of sensible arguments, most importantly that this ban might turn out to be counterproductive. Instead of coaxing the Russian population to question the neo-imperialist delusions of its “great leader,” President Vladimir Putin, it might provoke an in-your-face backlash, reinforcing rather than weakening the despot’s grip on the minds of his subjects.

Furthermore, Cashmore maintains, experience shows that sports bans largely failed to have a significant impact on regime policies in the past. South Africa is a case in point. There are good reasons to believe that the bans and boycotts the country was subjected to did little to hasten the collapse of apartheid. The same could, of course, be said about sanctions in general, as Peter Isackson has recently noted in these pages. Cuba is probably the most prominent example of the failure of prolonged sanctions to undermine a regime; Iran is another.

This could also be said about resolutions passed by the United Nations General Assembly condemning acts of aggression. The most recent vote following Russia’s attack on Ukraine has demonstrated once again the futility of symbolic gestures, even if supported by the vast majority of the international community. The reality is that for despots and autocrats, the only thing that counts is brute force. After all, what brought Nazi Germany to heel was not boycotts and sanctions but the overwhelming military might of the allies.

The Importance of Sport

Should we, then, lift the ban on Russian sport? In fact, should we lift all sanctions imposed on Russia, given the fact that, empirically, sanctions more often than not turn out to be counterproductive? The answer to the second question is obvious, at least to me. Sanctions might not be particularly effective in their impact on regime behavior, but they serve as an expression of moral revulsion, a signal that we don’t want to have anything to do with you, or at least as little as possible. This involves all areas, not only economics — and particularly sport.

It is easy to state, as Cashmore does, that “it would be foolish to hyperbolize the importance of sport; obviously it is not as serious as war, or a million other things. So, why hurt people who are not responsible for the original sin?” Anyone who has ever watched Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 film “Olympia,” which documented the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, is likely to get a sense of the importance of sport to autocratic regimes.

The Berlin Games were supposed to demonstrate the superiority of Adolf Hitler’s Aryan race. But a black athlete from the United States, Jesse Owens, had the audacity to steal the show, making HItler’s sport warriors — “swift as greyhounds, tough as leather, hard as Krupp steel” — literally eat dust. The Führer was not amused; he hastily left the stadium so not to have to bear witness to the Aryan humiliation.

A famous German strategist once characterized diplomacy as war by other means. The same could be said about sport, particularly during the Cold War period. This was certainly true in the case of the SED regime in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). For the regime, sport was more than a competition, it was a Systemfrage — a question of system, socialism vs. capitalism. Sports victories, particularly against West German athletes, meant confirmation of the superiority of the socialist system and, of course, of the Socialist Unity Party.

At the same time, sport provided the regime with the international visibility it so desperately craved. For this, no price was high enough, including the health of the athletes. Starting in the early 1970s, the regime embarked on a broad-based systematic doping program. Already at a young age, promising athletes were pumped full of drugs, designed to enhance their performance and competitiveness. Many of them still suffer from the long-term consequences.

The East German case is extreme but hardly exceptional. Anyone who has ever visited Rome can attest to that. Rome hosts an Olympic stadium that dates back to the late 1920s, initially forming part of the larger Foro Mussolini. In the 1930s, the stadium was expanded, in preparation for the 1940 Olympics. The games were ultimately canceled because of the war, depriving Mussolini of the opportunity to showcase his Fascist revolution: the massive obelisk at the entrance of the Foro, with its “Mussolini Dux” inscription, the mosaics leading up to the stadium, glorifying the Fascist takeover, the granite blocs bearing excerpts of Mussolini’s speeches.

Mussolini’s reign ended in April 1945 at a gas station in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto. Yet at the centennial of Mussolini’s March on Rome, later on, this year, the obelisk is still there, in Rome, in front of the Olympic stadium, together with the mosaics and the granite blocs — a silent testimony to a dictator’s hubris and the role of sport in it.

Get Real

One of the most often heard arguments these days on the subject of the sports ban is that it is the “innocent” athletes who are most directly affected by it. “I only feel sorry for the athletes” has been an often-repeated mantra by those commenting on the ban. Let’s get real. Compared to the suffering and anxieties of millions of Ukrainian civilians subjected to the Russian terror bombing, the chagrin of Russian athletes deprived of the opportunity to compete internationally is of little consequence — except, of course, for those, like Daniil Medvedev, who lose money. But then, the ATP has so far refused to follow other sports and ban Russian players.

Finally, one last thought. Before FIFA banned Russia from its World Cup competition, Poland, followed by Sweden and the Czech Republic, made it clear that they would not play Russia in the playoffs for the World Cup at the end of this year. Robert Lewandowski, Bayern München’s star forward and winner of the Best FIFA Men’s Player title two years in a row, was particularly adamant in his refusal to play against Russia.

I am quite curious to know what would have happened had FIFA not banned Russia. Would Poland, Sweden and the Czech Republic have been sanctioned for refusing to play the Russian national team? What would have it done to FIFA’s already dismal image if, as a result, Vladimir Putin’s aggression against his neighbor had been compensated with Russia’s automatic World Cup qualification?

The reality is that international competitions in certain sports, such as football and ice hockey, are more than just sports. They are sources of national pride and national prestige, particularly for countries with autocratic regimes, with star athletes as national icons who are more often than not close to the regime. Alexander Ovechkin, arguably the best hockey player at the moment, has a long history of supporting Putin, including the 2014 annexation of Crimea.

As Czech hockey great Dominik Hasek has put it, this is not a personal matter: “Every athlete represents not only himself and his club, but also his country and its values and actions. That is a fact.” It is for this reason that the ban on Russian sport was imposed. It should not be lifted.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The OVD-Info protest monitoring group said on Sunday the arrests were in cities including the Pacific port city of Vladivostok and the Siberian city of Irkutsk. Opposition activists posted videos showing protests in other cities.

It was not possible to independently verify the information, but various social media posts purportedly showed protests in different parts of Russia on Sunday.

There was no immediate comment by Russian authorities, but on Saturday, the interior ministry had warned that any attempt to hold unauthorised protests would be prevented and the organisers would be held to account.

At least 2,034 arrests on Sunday brought the total number of people held in anti-war protests since the invasion began on February 24 to more than 10,000, OVD-Info said.

Navalny call

A video posted on social media showed a protester in a square in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk shouting: “No to war! How are you not ashamed?” before two policemen arrested him.

Police used loudspeakers to tell a small group of protesters in Khabarovsk: “Respected citizens, you are taking part in an unsanctioned public event. We demand you disperse.”

Al Jazeera was not able to independently verify the post.

Jailed Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny had called for protests on Sunday across Russia and the rest of the world against the invasion.

“Because of Putin, Russia now means war for many people,” Navalny said on Friday. “That is not right: It was Putin and not Russia that attacked Ukraine.”

‘No to war’

About 2,000 people attended an anti-war protest in Kazakhstan’s biggest city Almaty, unverified videos posted on social media showed.

The crowd shouted slogans including “no to war” and waved Ukrainian flags.

Activists put blue and yellow balloons in the hand of a statue of Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin towering over the small square where the rally took place.

Putin ordered what he calls a “special military operation” to defend Russian-speaking communities against persecution in Ukraine and to prevent the United States from using Ukraine to threaten Russia.

The West has called his arguments a baseless pretext for war and imposed sanctions that aim to cripple the Russian economy. The US, United Kingdom and some other NATO members have supplied arms to Ukraine.

Putin’s approval ratings have jumped in Russia since the invasion, according to Moscow-based pollsters.

The president’s rating rose six percentage points to 70 percent in the week ending February 27, according to state pollster VsTIOM. The FOM pollster, which provides research for the Kremlin, said Putin’s rating had risen seven percentage points to 71 percent in the same week.

A number of international broadcasters, including the BBC, CNN, Italy’s RAI and Germany’s ARD and ZDF, have said they will stop reporting from Russia after its parliament passed a draft law punishing the publication of what it calls “fake news” about its invasion with jail terms of up to 15 years.

Award-winning independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta says it will also stop reporting on the war in Ukraine in light of the new law., while several other Russian news outlets have suspended operations.

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Such a measure would potentially give the authorities emergency powers, shut down the borders and order a state of mobilisation drafting able-bodied men into armed service.

While the Kremlin was swift to dismiss the speculation as “fake news” and has also urged people to “unite” around Putin, some did not want to risk it.

Al Jazeera spoke to several people who have opted to leave Russia in recent days for a number of reasons, including frustration over the country’s economic situation, its growing isolation on the international stage and the muzzling of the few remaining critical voices in the media.

‘Didn’t bother to pack’

Alexander* was already planning to travel abroad to see his girlfriend, but the unexpected start of the war on February 24 brought forward his plans.

“Immediately all my friends and relatives started to push me into wisely buying new tickets on this very date,” he told Al Jazeera by phone from Hungary’s capital. “I felt it as a little bit of an overkill at the time, but on Friday, already in Budapest, I saw on the news the skies were closed by all the European neighbours of Russia. So I guess they were right.”

(Al Jazeera)

Since countries in the European Union and elsewhere – as part of the West’s package of sanctions against Russia over the war – decided to close their airspace to any flights taking off or landing in Russia, the prices of airline tickets have soared, while anyone heading to the West has to take long detours.

Grisha* is planning to get a Schengen visa after arriving in Armenia on Friday evening, where flights from Moscow are still landing.

“I think it’s likely; very likely even,” he said, referring to martial law being introduced. “I didn’t even bother to pack, I just left three months’ rent with my housemates and bought the next flight to Yerevan.”

The visa issue is seen as an obstacle for those wanting to leave, especially since several countries including Latvia, the Czech Republic and Japan have suspended issuing visas to all Russian citizens. But others, like the Italian embassy in Moscow, are still accepting applications.

“We drove through the border crossing by Vyborg [near St Petersburg],” said Yuliya*, who decided on Wednesday night to leave for Finland with her husband.

“There weren’t many other cars at the border crossing,” she said, feeling “lucky” her own visa was still valid.

“When we crossed the border, it felt like we finally climbed out of a black hole that had been sucking us in all week.”

‘I feel strange’

Russia said earlier this week 498 of its troops had been killed in Ukraine so far. Putin has ordered compensation to be paid to the families of the soldiers who died, while officials praised the Russians fighting in the neighbouring country as heroes who will always be remembered.

But for Alexander, like the rest of the people Al Jazeera spoke to, the future seems gloomy.

“I want to be an optimist and it feels sweet to agree with those of my compatriots who envision this war as the economic suicide of Putin’s regime, which will inevitably collapse in the months to come under the heavy weight of hardcore sanctions and the hunger riots caused by them,” he said.

“But my 30-year life experience as a Russian literally doesn’t include a single memory of a successful democratic turn,” he added. “Hence I’m preparing myself for the worst: a gloomy decade in the war-economics, full-blown autocracy where luxuries such as journalism, cultural institutions or booming IT sector no longer thrive.”

Grisha, who took part in the anti-war protests in his hometown, feels guilty for leaving.

“I feel strange,” he said. “I think I’m gonna go back. I can’t just leave my friends back there, fighting.”

But the majority of Russians are staying where they are. And even if they wanted to leave, they are still bound to their home.

“Whoever has the opportunity is leaving; two or three of my close friends went through Turkey,” Tatyana*, 32, told Al Jazeera.

“I’m scared to stay here. We’re stuck in [a bind]: here, they will push on us; there, they don’t like Russians now.

“I think I will go but my whole family is here. I will try, probably, but my family won’t go, and I’ll need to find a job. If I go, it’ll just be me – and I don’t know where.”

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