Why There Will Be No Ice Hockey World Championship in Belarus

There is no official decision of the International Ice Hockey Federation yet, but this is a pure formality.

After Rene Fasel's visit to Minsk, it became quite obvious that there would be no Ice Hockey World Championship in Belarus. If earlier the question was still open, now everybody lost hope for it, including the Belarusian authorities.

There is no official decision of the International Ice Hockey Federation yet, but this is a pure formality. Even the Belarusian authorities themselves do not want to hold the Championship in Belarus. Fasel understood this when he heard a presentation prepared for him in Minsk. The document fell into the hands of the National Anti-Crisis Administration, and there are a lot of interesting things. He seems to have been specially prepared to disrupt the championship.

According to the executive director of the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Fund, Aliaksandr Apeikin, in the presentation, the Belarusian authorities explicitly admit that the main political risks of the World Ice Hockey Championship in Belarus are the threat of the Latvian government's refusal to jointly hold, EU sanctions, and boycotts of the tournament by foreign countries and associations.

Risks are usually voiced to prevent them and still achieve the goal. In this case, all the voiced risks have already been realized; that is, they have come true, which automatically means that we will not see the championship.

The most important thing is that the authorities themselves do not want to host the 2021 World Cup in Belarus either, since in the presentation they openly talk about the danger to their image of mass protests during the championship, videos and photos of fans, journalists and athletes from the streets of Minsk... At the same time, the authors of the document also admitted that regular Internet outages threaten the broadcast of the tournament. That is, no matter how many AMAP forces the authorities to take to the streets, they are well aware that they cannot stop the protests. At the same time, during the championship, it will not be possible to deploy foreign journalists on the border, detain them en masse on the streets together with their Belarusian colleagues, take them to the police department, and educate them there.

If now Lukashenka and Makei can still declare to the world community that protest actions are an internal affair of Belarus and others should not get involved in this, then holding the world championship cannot be called an internal affair. And journalists, they are journalists, that during a visit to the country they will talk about not only about the championship. And there will be a lot of these journalists. Plus, the fans themselves, including a huge number of bloggers and just people who love to post interesting pictures and videos. And what will happen if foreign hockey players take a walk on the streets of Minsk, who accidentally find themselves in the zone of active operations of the AMAP just because they like Belarusian girls with red-white-red umbrellas? An attempt to take a picture with them - and here you are at Akrestsina Street.

If the World Cup 2021 is held in Belarus, the authorities will, in any case, be forced to moderate the ardor of the security forces, which will automatically lead to an intensification of protests. Therefore, the words that Belarus is ready to host the championship is an ordinary bluff. Minsk categorically does not want it; moreover, it is terribly afraid but simply cannot admit it. Even the option of holding the championship in front of empty stands through a live online broadcast is no longer suitable for Minsk. Well, what if Latvians, Danes, Canadians, and other "not our" teams come to the championship and, for example, go out on the ice wearing white-red-white colors as a sign of solidarity with Belarusian athletes and the Belarusian people? What can the Belarusian authorities do with them - dismiss them from national teams or imprison them for a day for pickets? Therefore, the presentation also included the problem with the Internet in order to exclude even the most stripped-down version of the championship.

The whole presentation for Fasel is literally crammed with such rejection. In it, even the situation with COVID-19 is recognized as not meeting international standards, and official statistics are doubtful. This is all sorts of wrong. Lukashenka seems to be saying to Fasel: come, dear guests, we will definitely welcome you, only we have cockroaches running around at home, there is no water, there is nothing to eat, and nowhere to sleep. "Otherwise, beautiful marquise, everything is fine, everything is fine!"

The presentation clearly indicates that Fasel was invited to Minsk not to persuade him in favor of holding the championship in Minsk but to push him to make a completely different decision, which Minsk so needed. Apparently, the public embrace with Lukashenka was also arranged only to further anger the world community and the International Federation so that the necessary decision was finally taken.

There is another option that the presentation that fell into the hands of the National Anti-Crisis Administration is fake. But who could prepare it and why? To poke one more time into the National Anti-Crisis Administration telegram channel and say "fake"? But this is stupid. Therefore, there are no options. Almost certainly, a presentation for Fasel is real. This is confirmed by the theses that were voiced after the significant meeting by the two "hockey players." Therefore, there is almost no doubt - the fate of the championship has already been decided. Only one question remains open: who came out the winner of this game?

Sergey Satsuk, Ezhednevnik