Sanctions against Russian athletes are gradually being eased, but for the most part they are still in effect. Today, there is a growing understanding in the global sports community that without our athletes, international competitions lose a lot.

An important point in this situation is not only the political will of individual officials, but also the opinion of ordinary citizens of Western countries. Often ordinary people show much more common sense than officials.

Fans of the European club hung Russian flags in the stands to support our athletes in a difficult situation.

Reply to Lithuanians

In April 2022, the moral panic around everything Russian was at its peak. It is not surprising that in European countries every public event was used to make one or another statement on a topic. The Baltic states, traditionally unfriendly towards Russia, especially tried.

Thus, during the Euroleague basketball match between the Lithuanian Zalgiris and the Serbian Red Star in Kaunas, local fans staged a political provocation: during the game, NATO flags appeared in the stands, and spectators began shouting insulting words at the Serbian basketball players.

The reason was that the Serbian side has always supported Russia in international conflicts. Before the match, the Crvena Zvezda basketball players followed this tradition and refused to be photographed with an anti-Russian banner, as the Zalgiris players did. If now the Olympic principle of political neutrality of sport is gradually being remembered, then in the West they preferred to hypocritically remain silent about it when it came to Russia.

Red Star basketball players / Photo: © Tolga Adanali / Contributor / Getty Images Sport / Gettyimages.ru

Some time later, when Crvena was already playing a home match with the Turkish club Anadolu Efes, Serbian fans unfurled Russian flags in the stands, as well as banners with crossed out emblems of NATO and the European Union. Ordinary people of Serbia have shown that they are unequivocally on the side of the fraternal people.

Consistent support

Fans of Red Star, a club that has teams in many sports, have generally always had close ties to Russia. For example, the friendship between the fan movements of the Belgrade club and Moscow Spartak is well known. Football fans from Serbia have also expressed support for the Russians more than once. Back in 2017, during the match between Crvena and Krasnodar in the Europa League, flags with the Russian coat of arms were raised at the Rajko Mitić stadium.

Russian flags appear regularly at matches of the Serbian football championship. The most interesting thing is that it is very easy to get a tricolor in the Balkan country: just buy a Serbian flag and turn it over – and there you have the Russian flag. The fans, of course, take advantage of this opportunity.

In February 2025, we again watched the basketball confrontation between Red Star and Zalgiris in the Euroleague. This time, all the stands of the arena in Belgrade were painted in the colors of the Russian flag, and the fans sang “Katyusha” and MakSim’s song “Do You Know” – the unofficial anthem of Moscow Spartak.

“These Russian songs and banners were a reminder of the strong ties between the Serbian and Russian peoples that have lasted for centuries, and they also show an even stronger relationship between the fans of Red Star and Spartak Moscow,” a spokesman for the Serbian team told Sport24.

Red Star fans / Photo: © Srdjan Stevanovic / Euroleague Basketball / Getty Images Sport / Gettyimages.ru

The longer Russian clubs and national teams remain suspended from international competition, the more the global sports community sees the absurdity of these sanctions – especially against the backdrop of double standards that apply when it comes to other countries.