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Russia tests limits of WC feel-good factor

July 05, 2018 00:00:00


MOSCOW, July 04 (AFP): Safe, exciting, well-organised: Russian President Vladimir Putin has scored points by hosting the World Cup. But the soft-power dividend at home and abroad is limited, analysts warn.

Despite the cold shoulder he usually receives from his rivals in the West, Putin has presided over a good-humoured tournament with gripping matches and street parties.

Thousands of Latin American fans have fuelled a fiesta atmosphere in the summer heat. Even Russia's own unfancied team have given locals something to shout about and are now preparing for a quarter-final against Croatia.

Yet Andrei Kolesnikov, a Russian politics expert at the Carnegie Moscow Center, judges the soft-power effect of hosting the tournament as "insignificant".

Relatively few fans have made the journey to support teams from other Western nations, he noted, and "there is nothing to suggest that Russia's image abroad has improved".

"The patriotic fervour will subside and the day after the tournament everything will return to exactly the way it was."

Following the doping-tainted Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014 and violence involving Russian fans at the Euro 2016 football tournament, the World Cup was Russia's chance to take the edge off tensions through some soft-power diplomacy.


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