Alexander Ovechkin has appeared in a campaign video for United Russia, the party of Russian President Vladimir Putin, days before Russians vote in elections to the State Duma.
The Washington Capitals captain was filmed standing behind Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the Kremlin-funded broadcaster RT, as Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov delivered a speech defending the invasion of Ukraine. Russian business daily Vedomosti published images from the shoot.
Lavrov and Simonyan have both been under European Union sanctions since 2022. The EU barred RT from broadcasting across the bloc that year, though enforcement has proved uneven in several member states.
The clip is one of five released by United Russia, each built around a senior name on the party list. The others feature Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin, war correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny, children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova and Vladislav Golovin, who heads the State-backed Yunarmiya youth movement.
Lvova-Belova is the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant issued in March 2023 over the deportation of Ukrainian children.
Other sportspeople taking part in the campaign include former NHL defenceman Vyacheslav Fetisov, chess grandmaster Sergey Karjakin and mixed martial artist Fedor Emelianenko. Ovechkin is also reported to have joined a campaign photo shoot alongside Russian soldiers and individuals sanctioned over the war.
The 40-year-old has backed Putin publicly for years. He launched the Putin Team movement in 2017, ahead of the following year’s presidential election, and in 2025 passed Wayne Gretzky as the National Hockey League’s all-time leading goalscorer.
Voting runs from September 18-20. All 450 Duma seats are at stake, with United Russia holding a commanding majority since the 2021 election.
The appearance comes as European governments push back against the return of Russian competitors to international sport. Nine member states wrote to European Commissioner for Sport Glenn Micallef in July asking the European Commission to withdraw funding from bodies that have readmitted Russian and Belarusian athletes.
The signatories were Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania and Sweden. The move followed the International Olympic Committee’s decision on July 7 to lift provisionally its suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee, a decision that sits awkwardly with the EU’s wider refusal to normalise cultural ties with Moscow while the war continues.
Ice hockey has moved more slowly. The International Ice Hockey Federation has kept Russian national teams out of its championships for the 2026-27 season, citing safety and sporting integrity concerns.
Neither Ovechkin nor the Capitals have commented publicly on the video. He is entering his 22nd NHL season.
