Russia has launched its athletes' uniform for the Winter Olympics, as the country waits to find out if it will be banned from the games for doping offenses.
Model displays creation of designer Anastasia Zadorina during the presentation of the national olympic team's uniform collection, in Moscow, Russia, on Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2017. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)
Wednesday's launch in an industrial-style venue called "Hope" came ahead of a crucial International Olympic Committee vote next week on whether to allow Russia to compete in Pyeongchang, South Korea in February.
"We haven't had much good news recently, so I hope today's presentation will give Russian fans a little pleasure," Russian Olympic Committee president Alexander Zhukov said.
Prospective Winter Olympians were thin on the ground at the launch, while models displayed the uniforms.
Model displays creation of designer Anastasia Zadorina during the presentation of the national olympic team's uniform collection, in Moscow, Russia, on Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2017. Russia has launched its uniform for February's Winter Olympics - even as it faces a possible ban for doping offences. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)
Some more formal uniforms — of a kind possibly suitable for an opening ceremony — were a subdued light gray, with details in Russian white, blue and red. Other outfits included a red sweater, royal blue tracksuits and a headband in Russian colors.
The Russian Olympic Committee posted a picture on Twitter of models wearing the sweaters emblazoned with the slogan: "I don't do doping," though they weren't featured in the official presentation.
It wasn't clear which outfits would be worn by Olympic athletes, and which were simply merchandise for fans. There was no specialized competition gear for skiers or skaters — though there was what appeared to be a red women's swimsuit, unlikely to be much use in winter sports.
Model displays creation of designer Anastasia Zadorina during the presentation of the national olympic team's uniform collection, in Moscow, Russia, on Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2017. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)
Doping offenses have so far led the IOC to ban 22 Russian athletes who competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, amid evidence that host nation Russia operated a systematic doping program.
The most recent cases came to light on Wednesday, with three more Russian bobsledders being disqualified for doping.
Alexander Kasyanov, Alexei Pushkarev and Ilyir Khuzin finished fourth in the four-man bobsled but had been due to move up to the bronze when the original gold medal-winning Russian sled was disqualified, also for doping offenses.
The bronze could now go to the British team if the International Olympic Committee formally reallocates the medals. Britain last won a bobsled medal in 1998 when it took bronze in the four-man event.
Model displays creation of designer Anastasia Zadorina during the presentation of the national olympic team's uniform collection, in Moscow, Russia, on Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2017. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)
In a further embarrassment, the Russian Bobsled Federation has admitted it allowed an athlete to compete in one of its top domestic competitions even though he was supposed to be banned until 2019 for steroid use.
Ilya Atnabayev, one of the world's top young weightlifters until his 2015 ban, raced on Nov. 4 on the Sochi Olympic track in the Russian Cup, a competition that doubles as a tryout for the national team.
Atnabayev and his teammates finished second of eight crews in the four-man event.
The Russian Bobsled Federation said it had removed Atnabayev from its training programs, and blamed local officials in the Sochi area for letting him race without proper checks.
While he was banned as a weightlifter, Atnabayev's suspension should have counted for all sports signed up to the World Anti-Doping Agency code, including Winter and Summer Olympic events.
Alexander Zubkov, the RBF's president, has already been stripped of two gold medals he won as an athlete at the Sochi Olympics.
Russian troops are ramping up pressure on exhausted Ukrainian forces to prepare to seize more land this spring and summer as muddy fields dry out and allow tanks, armored vehicles and other heavy equipment to roll to key positions across the countryside.
With the war in Ukraine now in its third year and a vital U.S. aid package for Kyiv slowed down in Congress, Russia has increasingly used satellite-guided gliding bombs — which allow planes to drop them from a safe distance — to pummel Ukrainian forces beset by a shortage of troops and ammunition.
Despite Moscow's advantage in firepower and personnel, a massive ground offensive would be risky and — Russian military bloggers other experts say — unnecessary if Russia can stick to smaller attacks across the front line to further drain the Ukraine military.
“It’s potentially a slippery slope where you get like a death by a thousand cuts or essentially death by a thousand localized offensives,” Michael Kofman, a military expert with the Carnegie Endowment, said in a recent podcast to describe the Russian tactic. If the Russians stick to their multiple pushes across the front, he said, “eventually they may find more and more open terrain.”
Last summer’s counteroffensive by Ukraine was doomed when advancing Ukrainian units got trapped on vast Russian minefields and massacred by artillery and drones. The Russians have no reason to make that same mistake.
Last November, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered his forces to build trenches, fortifications and bunkers behind the more than 1,000-kilometer front line, but analysts say construction work moved slowly, leaving areas unprotected.
“If the defensive lines had been built in advance, the Ukrainians wouldn’t have retreated in such a way,” Ukrainian military expert Oleh Zhdanov said. “We should have been digging trenches through the fall and it would have stemmed Russian advances. Now everything is exposed, making it very dangerous.”
In a recent podcast, Kofman also said that Kyiv is “quite behind on effectively entrenching across the front” and “Ukraine does not have good secondary lines.”
After capturing the Ukrainian stronghold of Avdiivka, Russian troops are zeroing in on the hill town of Chasiv Yar, which would allow them to move toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, key cities in the Kyiv-controlled part of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. Russia illegally annexed Donetsk and three other regions in 2022, and the Kremlin sees fully controlling that region as a priority.
Zhdanov said Ukraine doesn't have the firepower to repel Russian attacks.
“They promised to have a defensive line 10 kilometers (6 miles) behind Avdiivka where our troops could get and dig in, but there is none,” he said.
Gen. Christopher Cavoli, head of U.S. European Command, sounded the alarm before Congress last week, warning that Ukraine will be outgunned 10 to one by Russia in a matter of weeks if Congress does not approve more military aid.
After securing another term in a preordained election in March, President Vladimir Putin vowed to carve out a “sanitary zone” to protect Russia's border regions from Ukrainian shelling and incursions.
Putin didn't give any specifics, but Russian military bloggers and security analysts said that along with a slow push across the Donetsk region, Moscow could also try to capture Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv, which Russia tried and failed to take in the opening days of the war.
In a possible sign of a looming attack on Kharkiv, a city of 1.1 million about 30 kilometers (some 20 miles) south of the border, Russia has ramped up strikes on power plants in the area, inflicting significant damage and causing blackouts.
Ukraine doesn't have enough air defense to protect Kharkiv and other cities, and the constant Russian strikes are part of Moscow's strategy to “suffocate” it by destroying its infrastructure and forcing its residents to leave, Zhdanov said.
Retired Lt. Gen. Andrei Gurulev, now on the defense committee of Russia’s lower chamber of parliament, acknowledged that capturing Kharkiv is a major challenge, and he predicted the military would try to surround it.
“It can be enveloped and blockaded,” he said, adding that taking Kharkiv would open the way for a push deep into Ukraine and require more Russian troops.
After Putin’s order for “partial mobilization” of 300,000 reservists last fall proved so unpopular that hundreds of thousands fled abroad to avoid being drafted, the Kremlin tried a different approach: It promised relatively high wages and other benefits to beef up its forces with volunteer soldiers. The move appears to have paid off as Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the military recruited 540,000 volunteers in 2023.
“There are no plans for a new wave of mobilization,” Viktor Bondarev, deputy head of defense affairs committee in the upper house of parliament, said in remarks carried by state RIA Novosti news agency. “We are doing well with the combat capability that we have.”
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FILE - In this photo taken from video released by the Russian Defense Ministry on April 9, 2024, Russian soldiers carrying flamethrowers ride an armored vehicle in an undisclosed location in Ukraine. Russian troops have been ramping up pressure on exhausted Ukrainian forces across the front line to prepare to take more land this spring and summer. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)
FILE - Ukrainian soldiers with the 22nd Mechanized Brigade prepare to launch the Poseidon H10 Middle-range drone near the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on March 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
FILE - In this image released by the Russian Defense Ministry on April 9, 2024, Russian soldiers fire flamethrowers at Ukrainian positions in an undisclosed location in Ukraine. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)
FILE - Ukrainian soldiers with the 71st Jaeger Brigade fire a M101 howitzer at Russian positions on the front line, near the city of Avdiivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, on March 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
FILE - In this video frame grab released by the Russian Defense Ministry on March 26, 2024, a Russian soldier in an undisclosed location fires an anti-tank missile at Ukrainian forces. Russian troops have been ramping up pressure on exhausted Ukrainian forces across the front line to prepare to take more land this spring and summer. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service photo via AP, File)
FILE - Ukrainian soldiers carry shells to fire at Russian positions on the front line, near the city of Bakhmut, in Ukraine's Donetsk region, on March 25, 2024. The outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian troops are struggling to halt Russian advances as a new U.S. aid package is stuck in Congress. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
FILE - Ukrainian National Guard soldiers simulate an assault during tactical training at a shooting range in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Feb. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrii Marienko, File)
FILE - Ukrainian servicemen with the 28th Separate Mechanized Brigade fire a mortar at Russian forces on the front line near the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, on March 3, 2024. The outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian troops are struggling to halt Russian advances as a new U.S. aid package is stuck in Congress. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
FILE – This frame grab from video released by the Russian Defense Ministry on Feb. 20, 2024, shows one of its Su-25 ground attack jets firing rockets during a mission over Ukraine. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)
FILE - In this image released by the Russian Defense Ministry on March 19, 2024, Russian soldiers participate in a military exercise somewhere in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)
FILE - A Ukrainian officer with the 56th Separate Motorized Infantry Mariupol Brigade fires rockets from a pickup truck at Russian positions on the front line near Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on March 5, 2024. The outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian troops are struggling to halt Russian advances as a new U.S. aid package is stuck in Congress. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
FILE - In this image taken from video released by the Russian Defense Ministry on March 21, 2024, a Russian rocket launcher fires at an undisclosed location in Ukraine. Russian troops have been ramping up pressure on exhausted Ukrainian forces across the front line to prepare to take more land this spring and summer. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)
FILE - Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the annual meeting of Russian Interior Ministry Board in Moscow on April 2, 2024. After securing another term in a preordained election in March, Putin vowed to extend Moscow's gains in Ukraine to carve out a "sanitary zone" protecting Russian border regions from Ukrainian shelling and incursions. (Sergei Savostyanov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE – A Su-25 plane is seen firing rockets over Ukraine in a video frame grab. The video was taken from inside another Su-25 plane and released by the Russian Defense Ministry on Jan. 22, 2024. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)
