title: Vladimir Putin, Russian foreign policy, and the 2018 FIFA World Cup
abstract: This chapter explores the extent to which Russia’s hosting of the 2018 FIFA World Cup was discursively constructed, by President Vladimir Putin and other practitioners of statecraft in Russia, as solidifying Russia’s return to great power status. The country’s re-emergence as a great power had, after all, taken place four years earlier, with its hosting of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. In official Russian discourse, the FIFA World Cup was cited as evidence that the international community was 