Wimbledon has set itself on a potential collision course with the rest of the tennis world after banning Russian and Belarusian players from this summer’s championships due to the scale and severity of the invasion of Ukraine.
The decision was taken after nearly two months of deliberations and legal advice, with the All England Club also concerned about the image it would present if the world No 2, Daniil Medvedev, lifted its famous silver gilt cup on Centre Court.
In an unusually strong statement, Wimbledon expressed “sadness” that individual players would suffer, but stressed it wanted to play its part “to limit Russia’s global influence through the strongest means possible”.
“In the circumstances of such unjustified and unprecedented military aggression, it would be unacceptable for the Russian regime to derive any benefits from the involvement of Russian or Belarusian players with the Championships,” it added.
The Lawn Tennis Association, which runs all the other major summer grass court tournaments in Britain, including the prestigious Queen’s Club event, has also announced a ban.
Those set to miss out include the men’s world No 8, Andrey Rublev, who wrote “No war please” on a TV camera lens after a match in Dubai, and the two-times women’s grand slam champion Victoria Azarenka.
Russia says it has tested new intercontinental ballistic missile
Russia’s defence ministry said it has test-launched its new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile , Reuters reports.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was shown on TV being briefed by the military that the missile had been launched from Plesetsk in the country’s north-west and hit targets in the Kamchatka peninsula in the far east.
Video footage released by the Russian defence ministry shows the launching of the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile at Plesetsk testing field. Photograph: Russian Defence Ministry/AFP/Getty Images
The Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile has “the highest tactical and technical characteristics”, Putin is quoted as saying.
He said the missile has no analogues elsewhere and would provide food for thought for those who try to threaten Russia.
Russia’s nuclear forces will start taking delivery of the new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile later this year once testing is complete , the country’s news agency Tass said on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
Dmitry Rogozin (left) and Vladimir Putin. Photograph: Mikhail Klimentyev/KREMLIN POOL/SPUTNIK/EPA
Dmitry Rogozin , head of the Roscosmos space agency, said deliveries of the missile, each of which can carry up to 10 warheads, would start “in the autumn of this year,” Tass reported.
Earlier in the day Russia said it had conducted a first test launch of the missile.
“This truly unique weapon will strengthen the combat potential of our armed forces, reliably ensure Russia’s security from external threats and provide food for thought for those who, in the heat of frenzied aggressive rhetoric, try to threaten our country,” the Russian president, Vladimir Putin , said.
The Pentagon said on Wednesday Russia had properly notified it ahead of its test launch, adding it saw the test as routine and not a threat to the United States.
Good thing no one is threatening Russia, then, hmmm?
I heard Ukraine had the sheer callous audacity to possibly attack a refinery for some reason.
Even worse, they callously refused to die on command! The unmitigated gall of them to go on breathing!
Tatyana Burak, who spent 45 days in Mariupol before escaping to Lviv with her husband, said her home was bombed and destroyed and shared her story with CNN:
It was a horrible dream which thousands of people were dreaming at the same time and it had no end. So, we spent a lot of time in the hospital because we were wounded right at the beginning of this Russian onslaught and we were taken by our military doctors to the hospital and so we felt every single bomb, every single shell which was going to our city.
“We understood there is nothing to be expected, that our city was doomed because these people came, as they said, to ‘liberate us.’ They didn’t know what they were going to liberate us from, but they said that we were suffering and they came to liberate us. They liberated us from our homes, from our jobs, from the possessions of all our lives, from our family history. They liberated many thousands of people from their lives. They just — I don’t know. They seem to be just crazy and insane.”
FUBAR
Putin is not looking like he is doing well in this video:
He’s definitely developed the puffy steroid face some people get. Maybe on prednisone?
True. Another thing is that his body language and way of speaking doesn’t say “strong leader” at all. I wonder why is he not keeping the facade even for a public video.
He’s feeling that his position is threatened- he’s losing a war - his assets are being confiscated and his health is failing. He sees that he’s in serious trouble on every front & it’s not like he can just retire to Mustique.
At a certain point leaders from the Soviet tradition stop caring, because what else are they gonna do. The USSR used to wheel out geriatric leaders like Brezhnev and Andropov for display even when they were obviously on death’s doorstep. The 1980s UK puppet satire show “Spitting Image” made fun of this with Chernenko, who I recall from one sketch was kept in a Kremlin freezer when he wasn’t in use.
It makes sense considering that Putin might think that his power is not threatened.
I wonder what it will do to the cult of personality that was created around him and his strongman persona both in Russia and abroad.
His horse-riding, goal-scoring, bear-hunting Shirtless Wonder days may be at an end. More importantly, his current sickly and stooped state gives me some hope that his Swan Lake broadcast moment will come soon.
