{"id":44359,"date":"2026-03-04T11:11:55","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T09:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/?p=44359"},"modified":"2026-03-04T11:40:50","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T09:40:50","slug":"russian-athletes-agents-of-kremlin-propaganda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/international-threats-en\/europe\/russian-athletes-agents-of-kremlin-propaganda\/","title":{"rendered":"russian athletes \u2014 agents of kremlin propaganda"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Center for Countering Disinformation of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, in cooperation with the Defence Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the Ministry of Youth and Sports, continues to expose public figures in the field of sports who promote propaganda in the interests of the kremlin.<\/p>\n<p>\u25ab\ufe0f The <a href=\"https:\/\/war-sanctions.gur.gov.ua\/sport\/persons?kp%5Bpub_id%5D=253\">\u201cChampions of Terror\u201d<\/a> section of the War &amp; Sanctions portal has been updated with information on ten additional russian nationals\u2014participants in the war against Ukraine who have entered Paralympic sports.<\/p>\n<p>\u25aa\ufe0f The kremlin uses so-called participants of the \u201cspecial military operation\u201d who have sustained disabilities as one of its propaganda tools. For this purpose, a joint project of the russian paralympic committee and the public movement \u201czdorovoye otechestvo,\u201d titled \u201cheroes of our time,\u201d has been established to facilitate the rehabilitation of war participants and their involvement in publicly justifying aggression against Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>Among the newly added individuals:<\/p>\n<p>\u25ab\ufe0f vladyslav leonidovych shynkar \u2014 member of the russian paralympic wheelchair fencing team; previously served as deputy commander of the \u201cvostok\u201d battalion;<\/p>\n<p>\u25ab\ufe0f anton pavlovych bushmakin \u2014 member of the russian national paracanoe team; a sapper and former marine, participant in combat operations near Avdiivka in Donetsk region;<\/p>\n<p>\u25ab\ufe0f tsiden bairovych geninov \u2014 member of the russian armed forces team; nominee for \u201cbest athlete of 2025\u201d by the International Military Sports Council (CISM). He served in the 5th separate guards tank tatsinskaya brigade, which took part in the offensive against Kyiv region.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/war-sanctions.gur.gov.ua\/sport\/persons?kp%5Bpub_id%5D=253\">\u201cChampions of Terror\u201d<\/a> section of the War &amp; Sanctions portal currently contains information on 223 individuals.<\/p>\n<p>Work on updating the list is ongoing. We call for stronger sanctions against russian athlete-propagandists and for preventing any form of cooperation with them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Center for Countering Disinformation of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, in cooperation with the Defence Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the Ministry of Youth and Sports, continues to expose public figures in the field of sports who promote propaganda in the interests of the kremlin. \u25ab\ufe0f The&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":44360,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","wds_primary_category":932,"footnotes":""},"categories":[932],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}