The opening to the World Cup here on Thursday was, like so much about this tournament, a sequence of remarkably odd juxtapositions. There was Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, giving a rousing speech to the sellout crowd at Luzhniki Stadium in which he described his country as “an open, hospitable and friendly country” before heading to a VIP box in which the invited heads of state were mostly post-Soviet autocrats or dictators from places like Belarus, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, as well as a high-ranking official from North Korea.
Then there was Putin encouraging visitors to “meet new friends and people who share the same values” while attending this “splendid football festival,” only hours after a top Russian lawmaker warned Russian women against having sex with foreign men during the World Cup — particularly if they are “of a different race.”
“It’s good if they’re one race but if they’re of a different race, then it’s worse,” said Tamara Pletnyova, a member of Russia’s lower parliament, in a radio interview. “We should bear our own children. I’m not a nationalist, but all the same.”