UPDATE: TG Saar has officially announced on April 5th they are ending the collaboration with Nikita Nagorny due to his statements and public actions in connection with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Russian and Belarusian gymnasts were officially banned by the FIG from international competitions starting from March 7th. That decision, however, only applies to international competitions and they can still compete nationally or at club competitions abroad. Competing for clubs in Italian, German, and French leagues has long been an additional income stream for Russian and Ukrainian gymnasts. After the start of the Russian invasion, several clubs offered to host Ukrainian gymnasts that competed for them – for example, Gym Flip Beaucaire-Tarascon is hosting several Ukrainian WAG gymnasts and their families, while two Italian clubs offered to host Illia Kovtun and Daniela Batrona after the gymnasts finish the World Cup circuit. At the same time, other clubs that have contracts with Russian gymnasts opted to continue the collaboration because inter-club competitions do not fall under the FIG umbrella and are not subject to the ban. For example, less than a week after the FIG ban started, Artur Dalaloyan competed for Romagna Club in Italian Serie A and Vladislav Poliashov competed for La Madeleine Club in Top 12. Several other clubs decided not to invite Russian gymnasts in solidarity with Ukraine. May will see the start of the new gymnastics season in Bundesliga which traditionally attracted multiple Russian gymnasts. For example, last season, Nikita Nagorny competed for TG Saar, David Belyavskiy for KTV Straubenhardt (the club Illia Kovtun competes for), Vladislav Poliashov for TuS Vinnhorst, and Artur Dalaloyan for TV Schwäbisch Gmün-Wetzgau. Only Poliashov appears on the roster for the current season, but it is not clear if other Russian gymnasts might also join the competition later. TV Schwäbisch Gmün-Wetzgau announced that they will not use Dalaloyan in the near future but did not rule out inviting him later. However, it seems that Nikita Nagorny plans to compete for his club despite not appearing on the roster right now. Nagorny answered MatchTV’s question on whether he will continue competing at club or invitational competitions abroad: “Yes, of course. I have a contract with Bundesliga. As soon as the season starts, I will participate. I plan to compete in Germany in May.”
TG Saar, the club Nagorny competed for last season and likely refers to in this quote, will start the season on May 7th in a competition against SC Cottbus. As of now, Nagorny is not listed on the roster for the season. Gymnovosti reached out to TG Saar regarding Nagorny’s participation in the competition but has not received a response yet.
With the war continuing, inviting Russian gymnasts who are government employees might seem like an endorsement of Russia’s actions. In addition to being funded by the government, several Russian gymnasts are in the military or sponsored by the army. For example, David Belyavskiy and Angelina Melnikova represent the CSKA (Army) Club and are directly sponsored by the Russian Ministry of Defense. Artur Dalaloyan is a lieutenant in the Russian National Guard. Nikita Nagorny, who is also in the National Guard, is even more closely connected to the Russian army and has been actively working in support of the war. Nagorny has been serving as the head of the general staff of the Youth Army for the past two years. In this role, he has been extremely active in the pro-war propaganda efforts over the past month. For example, one of the initiatives he is promoting is collecting letters and care packages for the Russian soldiers. Nagorny delivered one set of such letters and packaged to the soldiers himself.
Another initiative of the Youth Army is a competition of children’s drawings on the topic of “How Russia is defending Donbass”. There are reports that children are being forced by their schools to participate in the competition and share the pro-war drawings on their social media.
Nagorny has also been traveling to various Russian cities with a series of propaganda education events for refugees from Ukraine. The last two events of the series are supposed to take place in Ukrainian cities of Donetsk and Luhansk that have been occupied by Russia since 2014.
If Nagorny indeed competes for TG Saar in May, he will face Ukraine’s Igor Radivilov in the competition. Radivilov, who represents SC Cottbus, is a native of Mariupol, the city that has been destroyed by the Russian army. When the war started on February 24th, Radivilov was in Kyiv and only managed to leave Ukraine a few days ago as a part of the program that allows relocation of national team athletes to continue training and competing. With few exceptions, Ukrainian males aged 18 to 60 are not allowed to leave the country due to the mandatory general draft and the Ukrainian Gymnastics Federation faced many struggles trying to evacuate its adult male gymnasts and coaches. Radivilov was originally slated to compete in the Doha World Cup but was unable to leave the country and the same Ukrainian team that competed at the Cottbus WC continued to the next three world cups (they are currently competing in Baku).
Radivilov told Gymnovosti, he was finally able to evacuate and will train in Germany for the time being: “I will compete [in Bundesliga in May], I managed to leave Ukraine a few days ago, this was not easy. I will prepare for the competitions in Germany, because it is impossible to train in Ukraine due to the war!”
Multiple Ukrainian gymnasts advocated for the ban of Russian athletes from international competition and Radivilov joins them, saying that club competitions should be no exception: “Regarding the ban of Russians and Belarusians, I believe that there is no place in the sport for the people who support the war in Ukraine, whether it is a club or an international competition.”
Meanwhile, Ivan Kuliak who achieved international notoriety by wearing the Z letter on his leotard at the Doha World Cup, is able to monetize it. He was chosen as one of the ambassadors of the Russian sports brand “Zasport”, the official supplier of Team Russia apparel. Several other athletes who were chosen as ambassadors participated at the pro-war rally in Moscow together with Kuliak. Kuliak believes he did nothing wrong and simply expressed support for his country, so he and the Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation are currently fighting against a potential suspension. Valentina Rodionenko who is also facing a fine and suspension said that Kuliak’s participation in the rally became an additional argument for the suspension:
“The decision has not been made yet. Our lawyers disagree with their lawyers but they [the FIG] are, of course, sent on a disqualification. They gave an example that Vanya was at that rally, they are saying the rally was for the war.”
Nikita Nagorny said that there were many unfair decisions, when asked to comment on Kuliak’s case:
“In order to understand how much of it was right, you had to have been in the situation they [the Russian gymnasts] were in. They were far away from their homeland, without their loved ones. There were provocations and so on. No one can judge anyone here. What he did was his own choice. I hope that his suspension will not be prolonged. Additionally, two other coaches were suspended – the head coach and the coach on the floor who is actually a personal coach of another athlete. Many unfair decisions. We’ll hope that in this case, we will be able to change the situation in our favor.”
Nagorny is also taking part in the Russian Gymnastics Federation appeal of the FIG ban on Russian athletes in the CAS.
So far it seems that Polyashov is the only Russian gymnast unaffected by the ban. He still gets to compete in France and for some reason he’s the only Russian on the Bundesliga roster. He‘s been moved to the reserve team so I doubt they planned to send him to any big FIG events anyway.
You can find the preliminary team line-ups of German Bundesliga here: https://www.deutsche-turnliga.de/files/Inhalt/Dokumente%20PDF/01%20Dokumente%20Abteilung%20Maenner/02%20Saisoninformationen/Mannschaftsmeldungen_2022.pdf
Illia Kovtun will compete for KTV Straubenhardt again and nobody in his right mind would invite a Russian gymnast to join his team.
Yes, I linked to this file in the article and mentioned that Belyavskiy who used to compete for this club is not on the roster for this season.