Advice and sport: what issues were discussed at the forum in Samara
The next international forum "Russia — a sporting power" has come to an end in Samara. As usual, it closed with a meeting of the Presidential Council for the Development of Physical Culture and Sports. This time, Vladimir Putin and the top sports leaders focused on the topic of youth sports and the creation of the necessary infrastructure for it throughout the country. Within the framework of the forum itself, it is worth highlighting several sessions with the participation of the Russian Football Union (RFU) and the Russian Premier League (RPL), as well as discussing international cooperation in the face of sanctions - the ministers of sports of Russia, Belarus, Serbia and African countries took part in these events.
The Presidential Council
Vladimir Putin began his speech with statistics: 93.8% of children in Russia play sports. And he stressed the importance of how these activities affect the child's health, his studies, physical and general development. The Head of State proposed to synchronize the activities of the healthcare, sports and education systems, as well as local authorities, in order to more accurately determine the result and further support the process. The Government has been instructed to ensure that this task is solved, including with the involvement of leading scientific organizations, the National Center for Sports Medicine, and to develop appropriate benchmarks and indicators, methods and evaluation criteria for all those responsible for the education and physical education of children, and for protecting their health.
"The most important role here, of course, is assigned to the school, physical education teachers. It is important to maintain their authority and create maximum opportunities for meaningful, effective work, from reducing formal reporting to ensuring modern working conditions," Vladimir Putin explained. — It would be correct to get the opinion of the teachers themselves. I am sure that teachers will be happy to tell you exactly what is necessary for children to strive for a physical education lesson and enjoy studying. It is necessary to ensure that children are engaged in physical education. This fully applies to extracurricular activities. Complementing the basic educational program, sports activities should not only be sufficient in volume and healthy, but also really interesting. The work of the same school sports clubs should be built in such a way that they become attractive to children both in form and content."
Almost all the speeches of the council meeting participants emphasized the need to increase funding for the construction of sports infrastructure for children and young people at schools, universities and various institutions, as well as adequate medical care. All these initiatives will soon be formulated in the instructions of the President of the Russian Federation, after which the preparation of numerous amendments to the law on sports will begin, where these issues are planned to be regulated in more depth.
RPL, limit, and strategy
Back in October, when the business program of the forum became known, it was noticeable that there was not a single event where there was supposed to be a discussion about the limit on foreign players. This issue has repeatedly become the main issue in Russian sports in recent decades. There were particularly heated discussions around restrictions on inviting foreign players within the football community.
In the summer of 2025, Mikhail Degtyarev, Minister of Sports of the Russian Federation and President of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), raised this issue again when he spoke about the need to tighten the limit in the RPL. It was expected that this issue could be raised at the Council under the President of the Russian Federation, where the most high-profile issues about the future development of sports are often discussed. Moreover, in September 2021, at the Russia — Sports Power forum in Kazan, Vladimir Putin, on his own initiative, raised the issue of an excess of foreign labor in our leagues.
In the spring of 2022, the limit on foreign players in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) was reduced from five foreigners in one team's application for a match to three. It is still in effect. At the same time, the RPL came to a limit on the number of foreigners in the application for the match (10), but not on the field. In the summer of 2025, Mikhail Degtyarev proposed setting restrictions both on the field and in the application.
But this topic was not discussed at the meeting of the Presidential Council. But the day before, the Minister of Sports of the Russian Federation himself touched upon it when he remotely joined the session on the development strategy of the RPL until 2030. There he offered his own version of the answer to the main complaint against the limit from his opponents — that the alleged lack of competition leads to an increase in salaries of Russian football players. Moreover, their height is not proportional to their skill.
But Degtyarev said that the top 10 highest-paid current RPL players include only one Russian, Zenit St. Petersburg striker Alexander Sobolev. The salary of his teammate, Colombian midfielder Wilmar Barrios, is €5 million, and he ranks first. These data were recently published by the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, and the minister referred to it.
As for the RPL development strategy, its president Alexander Alaev announced plans to increase the average attendance of Russian championship matches to 18 thousand spectators. This season it is 14 thousand. This is almost twice as much as in the 2021/2022 season (then there were 7.5 thousand). Thus, the league returned to its pre-pandemic 2019 figures.
"The increase compared to 2024 for the same period of the season is almost 20%,— Alaev said. — The level of entertainment at the stadiums contributes to the growth: even the top manager of the Spanish La Liga at our February business breakfast highly appreciated our pre-match shows. Also, the criterion of attendance and occupancy of stadiums has become a very important KPI for all 16 clubs of the league. At the end of last season, for the first time, we distributed revenues not only on a sporting basis — the distribution of 555 million rubles depended on the results of working with the audience both at stadiums and in content."
The international agenda
Shortly before the meeting of the Council under the President of the Russian Federation, a plenary session of the forum was held, attended by Mikhail Degtyarev, Minister of Sports and Tourism of the Republic of Belarus Sergey Kovalchuk, Minister of Tourism and Sports of the Republic of Kazakhstan Yerbol Myrzabosynov, Minister of Sports of Serbia, former head coach of the Russian national men's volleyball team Zoran Gayic and their numerous colleagues from Africa and Asia.
The issues of sanctions against Russian and Belarusian athletes, which began after February 2022, were discussed. Degtyarev and Kovalchuk noted that over the past year, their players have gradually been allowed to compete, albeit in a neutral status. However, Belarusian judoists competed at the World Championships in the summer with their national flag and anthem. The breakthrough in lifting the ban was the admission of Russian water polo players to international competitions on Tuesday, which is the first time since 2022 that restrictions have been lifted for representatives of gaming sports.
Nevertheless, the Ministers emphasized the continued practice of double standards by international officials. In particular, Mikhail Degtyarev recalled the storm of indignation in the world caused by Indonesia's recent decision not to issue visas to Israeli gymnasts, which prevented them from competing at the World Championships in Jakarta. At the same time, as the Minister of Sports of the Russian Federation noted, similar stories about the non-issuance of European visas to Russians do not cause a similar reaction.
The Ministers of Sports of Serbia and Kazakhstan emphasized international cooperation. In particular, they paid special attention to the growing popularity of various national and non-Olympic sports. This area has been developing extensively in Russia in recent years. Thus, several sessions and contract signings within the framework of the forum took place with the participation of Boris Grishin, President of the All-Russian public organization Committee of National and Non-Olympic Sports of Russia.
"The speech at the plenary session of the foreign ministers showed that sport lives outside politics, despite all the dictated rules and regulations of certain organizations," Boris Grishin told Izvestia. — It is especially pleasant that the theme of national sports has been heard more than once in the speeches of representatives of the African National Committees and representatives of Eastern Europe. We understand that we are moving in the right direction and only the depoliticized norm of development that exists in our structures can become a real management system in sports. We have emphasized for ourselves the main thesis that we are moving in the right direction. We remember that every sport included in the Olympic Games program was once a national sport. And it is through national sports, through this history, that we can shape the future agenda of the international sports movement.
The head of the CNNWS also stressed that this format of the competition allowed the Russians to compete under their national flag.
— We work very closely with the Ministry of Sports of Kazakhstan. By the way, last year Kazakhstan hosted the World Nomad Games and invited our national team, which for the first time performed at the games as a Unified Russian team with an anthem and flag," Grishin explained.
The next Russia — Sports Power forum will be held in a year. It is not yet known which city will host it in the fall of 2026.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
