Spineless tennis chiefs have gifted propaganda to Vladimir Putin by forcing Wimbledon to let Russians play, writes IAN HERBERT

He was confidently striding around court on Tuesday, cap flipped back in the golden sunshine, taking the applause on No 1 Court as if butter wouldn’t melt.

But Karen Khachanov was part of Wimbledon’s inconvenient and deeply unpleasant truth: that the tournament has become a huge propaganda opportunity for Russia and its dictator Vladimir Putin.

They are trying so hard to help everyone here at SW19, with their ubiquitous, blue recyclable cups and the public-address message in estuary English telling spectators to take care as they move about and not to run.

But the goodwill does not extend to removing Russia from the spectacle. Treating it like a pariah nation, like most other sports do, until there is an end to the nightly drone attacks and the forcible deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, which has seen 20,000 spirited away from their homes.

Such unspeakable atrocities are beyond the imagination of the spineless men’s and women’s tennis tours — organisations so worried about the sensitivities of Russian players that they insist on including them. They would have stripped Wimbledon of ranking points had the tournament excluded them, as it briefly did three years ago.

The cowardice created the unedifying spectacle, heading into Tuesday's play, of Russia and its puppet ally Belarus dominating the singles events. Three Russian players and a Belarusian were among the eight women’s quarter-finalists, with Khachanov keeping up Putin’s end in the men’s last eight.

We are being asked to accept their participation is legitimate because they have signed a declaration agreeing that they don’t represent Russia or Belarus and will not accept money from them. That PR cover insults our intelligence.

The work of organisations such as Base of Ukrainian Sports exposes the fallacy. Their reporters highlighted a sequence of Instagram images posted by Khachanov last year which included the Russian military symbol, the St George ribbon. ‘It disappeared after 24 hours,’ the team’s researcher Artem Khudoleev tells me when sending me the image, which he captured.

This is the same Khachanov who reportedly rounded on compatriot Andrey Rublev a few years ago for expressing a wish for peace between his country and Ukraine, and writing ‘No war please’ on a TV camera lens.

Then we have Mirra Andreeva, the 18-year-old who faces Swiss player Belinda Bencic in another quarter-final on Centre Court on Wednesday. Her biography on the Wimbledon website curiously omits her Russian nationality. ‘Not available.’

The teenager’s Instagram account clears up that little mystery. World No 7 Andreeva has ‘liked’ a prominent post congratulating Putin on his birthday, and a comic video made by a Putin enthusiast mocking Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Not all Russians toe the Putin line. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, who lost to Amanda Anisimova in another of Tuesday's quarter-finals, has criticised Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine as strongly as any Russian player. ‘Personal ambitions or political motives cannot justify violence,’ she said recently.

‘In these cases, the Russian regime cannot use her in its propaganda, because it would compromise it,’ Stanislav Oroshkevych, a journalist with Tribuna, one of Ukraine’s biggest sports sites, tells me. ‘But there are so very few.’

While we are asked to believe that the absence of a Russian flag beside players’ names has significance, their progress is seized on by Putin propaganda outlets such as RIA Novosti, to ridicule Britain. 

‘The British are horrified by the success of the Russians at Wimbledon,’ they mocked a few years ago, including the Princess of Wales in their derision.

There is always outcry when one brings geopolitics into sport. I am ready for the battery of ‘stick to sport’ emails which will follow this. Bring them on, I say. Because I will argue to the end of the earth that it is a disgrace to turn away, as if Ukraine’s destruction in plain sight was not happening.

In Nova Kakhovka, a city in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine, a legendary tennis school is in ruins — devastated a year ago when the Russians blew up a hydroelectric power plant and flooded the place.

Hundreds of children had developed their skills there, including world No 68 Yuliia Starodubtseva, beaten in the second round here by another Russian, Liudmila Samsonova. ‘The facilities were destroyed,’ Oroshkevych says of the centre, which had stood since 1953. ‘It was heartbreaking for us.’

Perhaps some of the Russian players being given the gilded opportunity to play here might wish to extend some compassion to those being bombed into oblivion by quietly making a financial contribution to the restoration of that place. Don’t hold your breath.

After Khachanov lost in four sets on Tuesday, I asked him about being here without a Russian flag beside his name. He told me he wants one. ‘Unfortunately, it is what it is. It’s not in my power to kind of argue with that,’ he told me. Wasn’t that dependent on a ceasefire, though? And didn’t he want that?

‘What kind of question is that?’ he asked me. ‘What do you think? That’s obvious, I think. If you ask any person in this room or outside the room, I think everybody would wish this to happen.’

Perhaps he might wish to take the thoughts of ‘everybody’ all the way back to the Kremlin.

How a school trip to SW19 made my day 

Wimbledon doesn’t always extend terribly far beyond middle England, so it was a joy to meet a group from Whitefield Primary School in Anfield, brought along by my friend Jill, who is their brilliant head teacher, and her colleague, James.

The tickets came via the LTA Youth Schools ballot and funding for the trip to London from the LFC Foundation and the Fred Perry Tennis Trust.

Jill’s always been far braver than me — what a responsibility, taking that group across London.

But there they were by midday, resplendent in their purple school uniforms, doing Liverpool proud. My favourite Wimbledon scene this year.

Football's soul does exist

Thanks for the messages from those who share my fury that not a penny of the £2.3billion made from the sale of Chelsea has found its way to Ukraine. 

If Roman Abramovich wishes to offer some enlightenment, I am here. Others within football are helping in unpublicised ways, unimaginable to him. 

Cherries Aid, run by a group of individuals linked to Bournemouth, has worked to get 45 boxes of training kit and school IT equipment into Ukraine. 

Football does have a soul.