A T-72 tank roared into the jump at full speed, launching several feet into the air.
“Ooooohhhh!” several spectators yelled as it slammed back down so hard its gun barrel nearly hit the ground.
A second T-72 followed behind, but suddenly everyone’s attention was directed behind them as strong winds ripped the metal-and-tarpaulin roof off the grandstands. The spectators climbed over the barriers to escape as rain poured down.
Illustration: Mountain people
This was the tank biathlon, a sport devised by Russia in 2013, ostensibly to allow its own tank forces and those of other countries to test their equipment, but it also serves as a patriotic spectacle and a show of military might held with an eye on the West.
It is part of the huge International Army Games taking place across Russia and Kazakhstan, which also include competitions among jet fighters, air-defense systems, artillery and paratroopers.
More than 3,000 personnel are taking part from Russia and 18 friendly countries, such as Angola, Venezuela, Serbia and several former Soviet republics.
Dmitry Panin, a doctor who had come on a “patriotic impulse,” said the competition was a display of military prowess and a way to “unify the nation.”
“It’s to raise our country’s status, to show that we are a world power and will remain so,” he added.
As the deafening reports of tank shots boomed across the field, Nikolai Kudryavtsev, who once served in a tank brigade himself, said: “It shows mastery — it shows who’s better prepared among these countries. NATO refused to come because they’re afraid.”
Russia has found itself at the center of several scandals in recent weeks, provoking outrage abroad, but defiance at home.
First, sporting authorities suspended the Russian track and field team and almost banned the entire country from the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games following findings of state-sponsored doping.
Then US officials and experts suggested the Kremlin was most likely behind an e-mail hack that showed the US Democratic National Committee’s desperation that former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton should triumph over US Senator Bernie Sanders in the battle for the US Democrats’ presidential nomination.
The furore over the e-mails was a boost for US Republican candidate Donald Trump, who has previously spoken of his admiration for the leadership qualities of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and intimated he would move to lift sanctions on Moscow.
Responding to the doping scandal, Putin promised reforms, but also rejected the accusations as “interference of politics in sport” and the track team ban as “open discrimination.”
Russian Minster of Sport Vitaly Mutko has repeatedly said that Russia is being singled out for what is a worldwide problem.
Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov said he could not respond to the e-mail hack suspicions without using four-letter words.
As their officials lashed out on national television at the West for its alleged prejudices and attacks on the country, many Russians expressed similar opinions.
In a survey published late last month by state pollster the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), 55 percent said the accusations of mass doping were groundless and the result of a “political hit job” by Russia’s Olympic competitors.
Another 31 percent said doping existed in other countries and punishing only Russia was an “injustice.”
A whopping 89 percent supported the actions of Putin, who has dismissed officials named in World Anti-Doping Agency investigations, but said further evidence must be presented to back the accusations.
A survey by the independent Levada Center, released on Sunday, showed 71 percent thought the agency’s evidence of systematic doping by Russia was not convincing; 83 percent disapproved of talks about banning Russia from the Olympics.
“Of course, it’s politics,” said Grigory Klimov, a former athletics coach, when asked about the doping scandal.
He was in the stands at Stars 2016, a track meet for Russia’s banned athletes, which the media dubbed an alternative Olympics.
“Sanctions aren’t working. We are surviving and even flourishing. So how can they get us? Take away the Olympics from us,” Klimov said.
Klimov recalled the US and Soviet Olympic boycotts of the 1980s.
Now Russians are again “upset” over big sport, he said.
“It’s not fair. There shouldn’t be collective responsibility,” he added. “There should be a presumption of innocence. How can I answer for my comrade?”
“How do I know what he took?” Kilmov added.
The coach, Alexander Tsyplakov, similarly drew a parallel with the Cold War, which he said had never ended: “Cold War, hot war and information war. There’s always victims and ruined fates.”
Tsyplakov said the doping accusations had been made up, expressing an increasingly widespread belief that a plot is afoot to deprive Russia of the 2018 World Cup.
“It’s propaganda — they need to get at Russia to take away the World Cup,” said Kudryavtsev, a former tank brigade soldier.
His words suggested a standoff with the West was very much alive, as was a lingering sense of resentment.
“Russia for its entire history has never kneeled to anyone. Now the Americans think they’re the fucking best,” he said. “Russia is a great country, but [US President Barack] Obama spits on it. Obama is a monkey and an ass.”
Like many Russians, Kudryavtsev’s opinion of Trump was much higher, since the candidate “says he’ll be friends with Russia.”
An April YouGov poll found that the only G20 country where Trump was viewed more favorably than Clinton was Russia.
Whereas Clinton is associated with the failed “reset” of relations with Russia in 2009 and the NATO bombing in Libya, Trump is seen as a break in these tensions, according to pollsters.
The hacking scandal has not been covered widely in the Russian media, which is dominated by state television channels, but when told about the e-mail hacking suspicions, Kudryavtsev called them “nonsense.”
According to Valery Fyodorov, head of VTsIOM, Russians instinctively distrust the West after the booms in poverty and crime during the US-style market reforms of the 1990s, as well as the NATO bombing of Russian ally Serbia in 1999.
“We think the West is a very hypocritical force that hides its intentions behind pretty words,” Fyodorov said. “Since [the 1990s] we take the messages of the West as their opposite. If the West praises us, that means we are doing something not right, because enemies don’t praise, and if they praise us we are doing something against our interests.”
However, Levada Center head Lev Gudkov said Russians’ anti-Western sentiments are the result of a “besieged fortress” mentality the government has promoted for its own legitimation.
The tank biathlon and Army Games are one of several martial events to have gained prominence in recent years, along with the huge parade on Red Square for Victory Day and the celebration of the annexation of Crimea.
“I don’t remember such an intensive militaristic manufacturing of public opinion, not even in Soviet times,” Gudkov said.
The rejection of doping accusations and the ignorance over the hacking scandal were a result of the coverage of state television, he said, the main source of news for Russians.
“We only see the effects of this propaganda, especially in the foreign sphere. Here it is built on a confrontation with the West — in conditions of crisis it’s the only way to facilitate the unity of society... It helps them come to terms with their living standards and not blame the authorities. If it’s war, it’s war, and you need to support the leadership,” Gudkov said.
The US Senate’s passage of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which urges Taiwan’s inclusion in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise and allocates US$1 billion in military aid, marks yet another milestone in Washington’s growing support for Taipei. On paper, it reflects the steadiness of US commitment, but beneath this show of solidarity lies contradiction. While the US Congress builds a stable, bipartisan architecture of deterrence, US President Donald Trump repeatedly undercuts it through erratic decisions and transactional diplomacy. This dissonance not only weakens the US’ credibility abroad — it also fractures public trust within Taiwan. For decades,
In 1976, the Gang of Four was ousted. The Gang of Four was a leftist political group comprising Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members: Jiang Qing (江青), its leading figure and Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) last wife; Zhang Chunqiao (張春橋); Yao Wenyuan (姚文元); and Wang Hongwen (王洪文). The four wielded supreme power during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), but when Mao died, they were overthrown and charged with crimes against China in what was in essence a political coup of the right against the left. The same type of thing might be happening again as the CCP has expelled nine top generals. Rather than a
Taiwan Retrocession Day is observed on Oct. 25 every year. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government removed it from the list of annual holidays immediately following the first successful transition of power in 2000, but the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-led opposition reinstated it this year. For ideological reasons, it has been something of a political football in the democratic era. This year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) designated yesterday as “Commemoration Day of Taiwan’s Restoration,” turning the event into a conceptual staging post for its “restoration” to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The Mainland Affairs Council on Friday criticized
The topic of increased intergenerational conflict has been making headlines in the past few months, showcasing a problem that would only grow as Taiwan approaches “super-aged society” status. A striking example of that tension erupted on the Taipei MRT late last month, when an apparently able-bodied passenger kicked a 73-year-old woman across the width of the carriage. The septuagenarian had berated and hit the young commuter with her bag for sitting in a priority seat, despite regular seats being available. A video of the incident went viral online. Altercations over the yielding of MRT seats are not common, but they are
RSS