LAUSANNE, Switzerland — “What do you think about your new president — you are shocked?”
The man posing the question to me was Mikhail Kusnirovich, owner of Russia’s largest department store. He and Donald Trump had tried to strike a deal to bring the Miss Universe pageant to Red Square years before, he said. He went on to answer his own question. “I think he’s going to be good.”
It was December 2016 in Mr. Kusnirovich’s office overlooking the Kremlin, weeks before United States intelligence agencies would publicly conclude that Russia had interfered in the election in the interest of tilting it toward Mr. Trump. Nesting dolls with the American president-elect’s face stared out of stalls at the holiday markets. But the topic at hand for me was not election meddling but rather Russia’s sophisticated cheating at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Russia’s two subversions, of global sports and American democracy, have more in common than you may think. Both involve intelligence agents, Russia’s will to win and the same cyberespionage team. Both have prompted millions of dollars of investigations and challenged public confidence — in the purity of sport and in the strength of democracy.
The two breaches are at the heart of how President Vladimir Putin has suggested he wants to reclaim Russia’s past: by weakening Western democracy and dominating world sports.
Mr. Kusnirovich belonged to a group of prominent public figures focused on restoring Russian sports to good global standing. The group was created last summer by Mr. Putin after revelations that the nation had stolen medals in Sochi by relying on steroid-laced martinis, hundreds of ounces of stockpiled clean urine and the overnight stealth of the country’s Federal Security Service.
