Revenge of Igor Esmantovich
Apparatus maneuvers of the president of HC CSKA against conscript-goalkeeper Fedotov
Oleg Ivankin
Now we will reveal in detail the relationship between the true causes of the “Fedotov case”. And we will show how one of the big elite groups “saddle” the wave of a big process that is not related to hockey at all. But at the same time, she managed to deal with an objectionable athlete with the wrong hands. And, as a result, jeopardized the career of the best goalkeeper of the Russian championship.
They set the system on Fedotov
It is no secret that unscrupulous employees of various ranks are still found in the military conscription system. We are now broadcasting not our position, but the position of state bodies. Who make accusations. As against high-ranking employees of the military registration and enlistment office who illegally distributed “preferential” military tickets. So it was against cunning intermediaries who searched for and brought in clients who were ready to pay for the “solution of the issue” with the army. The activities of the competent authorities, which are engaged in the fight against such unpleasant aspects, can only be welcomed. Obviously, the activation of this necessary activity is not related to sports at all. In reality, when a country is conducting a special military operation, the issue of conscripting reservists into the Armed Forces can arise at any moment. It is clear that such decisions are made by the top leadership of the country. But the conscription system itself must be ready to fulfill the order. Not surprisingly, in recent months there has been a continuous improvement in the quality of this system. Part of this process was the fight against unscrupulous employees, their identification and punishment.
The process was progressive and inexorable, but for the time being, nothing threatened the career of the goalkeeper Fedotov. Even when details surfaced that the sellers of military tickets had a clientele among professional hockey players. After all, the purge was at the system level. And when viewed from above, that Fedotov, that any other athlete from the KHL is the same conscript as other owners of dubious delays. The goalkeeper of the Russian national team could have been lucky if his name was at the end of the list of cases of conscripts with whom the military registration and enlistment office began to deal. Well, the spring draft would have ended, Fedotov would have left for the training camp of the NHL club.
But it was here that there were characters who wanted to defiantly and publicly take revenge on the national team player. A large elite group, one of the most influential centers of power in domestic hockey. It was she who managed to “saddle” the useful process of restoring order in the conscription system. And she used it to her advantage – that is, she set the system on Ivan Fedotov.
We are talking about the elite group of hockey CSKA, one of the leaders and drivers of which is the extremely controversial functionary of Russian hockey, the president of HC CSKA Igor Esmantovich.
CSKA breaks the career of the best goalkeeper of the country out of revenge
In the 2021/22 hockey season, Fedotov played just for CSKA. He helped the Moscow club win gold medals, was recognized as the best goalkeeper of the year. And then he decided to leave the team, signing a contract with the Philadelphia Flyers NHL club. The prevailing opinion in the industry is that Fedotov’s contribution to CSKA’s championship success was great. And the hockey player definitely did not expect a hit in the back from the former club.
Moreover, at first CSKA reacted to the decision to leave normally. Esmantovich publicly spoke about respect for the NHL goalkeeper’s plans.
Experts familiar with the specifics of intra-hockey processes believe that Fedotov’s departure was even somewhat beneficial to the president of CSKA. Esmantovich is a very experienced and skillful apparatchik. He was ready to turn the loss of a key hockey player into a trump card – a trump card for a future report to the club’s curators and sponsors. The fact is that in CSKA there is a very severe demand for the result. For example, in the summer of 2021, the president of the club, saving his position, placed the main blame for the failure in the playoffs on head coach Nikitin. Thus leaving CSKA without the best club coach in the country. But he himself remained safe. So, in the fall, a new Russian hockey championship will begin. And if the Moscow club performs unsuccessfully in it, then in the summer of 2023 the argument about “the loss of one of the best goalkeepers in the country” could become a lifesaver for Esmantovich personally. The CSKA president understood this and therefore did not interfere with Fedotov’s steps to leave for the NHL. He did not interfere either in April or in May. However, in June the situation changed dramatically.
According to our information, sharp dissatisfaction with the very fact of the loss of Fedotov was expressed. This dissatisfaction was expressed by the very sponsors and curators for whom the cunning excuses described above were in store for a conversation. The master of hardware intrigue Esmantovich had to get out. In a conversation with his bosses, he exposed the country’s best goalkeeper as a traitor and defector, and also promised to punish Fedotov to the fullest extent. Since the head of CSKA did not have sports instruments, he had to resort to unsportsmanlike wrestling in the truest sense of the word.
The information about the “evader” was not only brought to the military registration and enlistment office. The persecution of Fedotov was initiated. Now we will show that the actions of the system against an athlete do not at all resemble the standard of relations between a military registration and enlistment office with problem recruits. There are indisputable facts that speak of the involvement of a large elite hockey group of CSKA, which committed reprisal against the goalkeeper of the national team with the hands of the system.
Until 2019, the athlete had a deferment from the army as a student, but then, of course, he lost the “iron” deferment from conscription. Who knew better about this nuance? In professional sports, it is the employing club that has full access to the athletes’ documents, as well as full information about legal problems and vulnerabilities. Naturally, CSKA knew everything about Fedotov.
The law in the Fedotov case is applied selectively. “Not a law, but a bludgeon,” said Volodya Sharapov, the hero of the film “The meeting place cannot be changed.” It is pointless to refer to the banal truth that everyone must obey the law. Nobody argues with this. But why did the best goalkeeper of the KHL have problems related to the performance of military duty only now? The student deferment ended in the summer of 2019, and they remembered the “deviator” three years later. Is it really the fact that until the summer of 2022 Fedotov played for the “right” clubs and that was the only reason he was untouchable? And as soon as he signed a contract with the NHL club, he was immediately remembered for his unpaid military duty to the Motherland.
CSKA Esmantovich, if desired, could ironically, once and for all, solve all the problems of Fedotov with the army. Register an athlete for alternative service as an IT specialist, hire a young programmer – and let the professional sit under the login “Ivan Fedotov” and perform all the technical tasks issued by the Ministry of Defense. For 100-150 thousand rubles, any university graduate would agree to this. For KHL clubs, the money is scanty, especially since Fedotov himself was by no means overpaid. The contract in CSKA-2021/22 was 25 million rubles, which is quite a bit for the best goalkeeper in the country.
If the club in which Fedotov played did not close the issue with the army, it is obvious that he did not close it on purpose. As if he foresaw that he would need a tool for blackmail. Well, or a way to keep the athlete on a short leash, if you prefer. “As long as you are loyal and obedient, there will be no problems with the call. But if something goes wrong, blame yourself.” Methods from the arsenals of the secret services or the Sicilian dons. Sometimes the patronage of big people has a high price … Fedotov was detained at the end of June. But the spring conscription begins much earlier! Isn’t it obvious that the surge of attention to the athlete’s military duty was absolutely man-made? After all, if the initiative came from the military registration and enlistment offices themselves, who prevented them from sending employees for detention back in the spring? Then it would not be necessary to catch the goalkeeper with several special groups throughout the city, as happened in St. Petersburg. It is much easier to detain a hockey player right at the exit from the CSKA charter, who arrived at an away match of the national championship. But no – in the status of a KHL player, Fedotov remained inviolable for the draft board. But in the summer, when the situation changed, interest “suddenly” appeared in him.
Everyone was struck by the very scope of the operation to detain a hockey player in St. Petersburg.
Minibuses, several task forces, employees of power units on safety net. Fedotov – does he look like the main anti-hero of the novel “In August 44th” bandit Mishchenko, who “owns many types of martial arts and is especially dangerous when detained”? Why send so many people against the goalkeeper of the Russian national team, how many are involved in the capture of experienced terrorists from banned Islamist organizations? There is only one rational explanation. Someone very influential and serious really wanted 100 percent guarantees of success. It was unacceptable to miss Fedotov, it was necessary to exclude the factor of chance.
And the last. Anyone who is familiar with the realities of the work of military registration and enlistment offices – the maximum workload of employees, the shortage of personnel – will understand: no one will spend so much effort on a conscript who does not have useful military competencies. If there is no special motivation or special assignment. And there is also the human factor: the middle-level bosses are unlikely to want to be responsible for the initiative against the athlete of the Russian hockey team. Activity is possible only by order. Draw your own conclusions.
One could go on, but the facts given are enough. There is no point in accusing Fedotov himself and his agents of a careless attitude to army issues. There is no reason to believe that the military registration and enlistment office’s interest in the hockey player in June was planned or arose on its own. The participants in the action, which is described in detail in the media and filmed on TV cameras, play the role of pawns in this whole story. Who walk in the interests of large elite groups.
For the sake of momentary interests, hockey is sacrificed
In the interests of the same elite group – and a red herring. In telegram channels, stuffing appears that other KHL (and even NHL) players also have problems with the army. In fact, such messages are just an attempt to divert attention, shift the focus from the true initiators of the “Fedotov case” in the person of the leaders of HC CSKA.
At the 2022 Olympics, Fedotov was the absolute best player in the Russian national team. With his confident game at the gate, he leveled out many weaknesses in the team’s game (for example, an absolutely gray game in attack, which disappointed all hockey fans, including the most senior ones). If not for the exploits of Fedotov, then the team could have been left without medals at all.
For the sake of the apparatus and political interests of one elite group, the interests of the entire hockey are once again sacrificed. Repressions against Fedotov can easily scare away hundreds of young players from playing for Russian clubs – athletes start leaving at 17. But, alas, no one thinks about the development of sports. Momentary considerations are above all. It was this approach that failed at the Winter Games in Beijing. It is this approach that will quarrel the Russian KHL league with the NHL – and again, as in the early 90s, the threat of hundreds of the country’s best players leaving for North America will become a reality. Nobody won from the fact that the goalkeeper of the Russian national team was forced to serve in the army – neither the athlete, nor the Armed Forces, nor the number one winter sport. Only the president of CSKA Esmantovich won. The scale of damage is disproportionately greater than the amount of benefit received. But such is the logic of elite games.
