UKC

A Ukrainian guiding company has announced that it will not accept Russian clients, while Ukrainian and international mountaineers are calling for a wider ban on Russian expeditions and clients this upcoming season - and potentially beyond. 

We spoke to Ukrainians, a Russian guide and a conflict resolution expert to explore their arguments for and against.
 

In the coming weeks, climbers will travel to the high mountains of Asia ahead of the spring mountaineering season. Visas are secured, permits are in place and expedition companies are booked and ready. But as sanctions continue to be imposed on Russia, some Ukrainian mountaineers argue that Russian climbers should be banned from accessing foreign mountains for as long as their government wages war on Ukraine.

Read more

In reply to UKC/UKH Articles:

Going on an extended holiday to Russia this year would be a pretty stupid thing to do regardless of international solidarity - no-one knows how far this is going to escalate. The foreign office has advised against non-essential travel.

In reply to UKC/UKH Articles:

I think this is a very good article by Natalie, and I don't necessarily disagree with most of what's said by anyone in it. Nor am I into wooly feelgood statements about humanity and the value of mountaineering.

But I can't help remembering the actions of two Russian alpinists on Broad Peak last year. https://explorersweb.com/broad-peak-new-reports-on-the-rescue-and-kims-fata... 

Vitaly Lazo and Anton Pugovkin went out of their way to rescue two other climbers who had fallen and were trapped. There were many other climbers around, but most of them either ignored the calls for help or were clueless as to what was happening.

Vitaly Lazo, amazingly, took a rope and rapped 20m down the Xinjiang side - at 7900m - to try and rescue the Korean climber, who unfortunately fell and died soon after. Most of us can barely put one foot in front of the other at that height, without O2. Lazo's actions were truly heroic.

In reply to UKC/UKH Articles:

Definitely torn on this one. Good to see a range of views in the article. 

I can see the argument that by making life difficult / miserable for all Russians we may end up spurring them to political dissent, which is what may be necessary to halt the invasion.

But at the same time I'm not sure I like the implication that ordinary people of a particular nationality can be targeted with the intent of coercing them to put themselves and their families at risk, or broadly hold them responsible for their government's actions. Especially for Russians that don't actually live in Russia at the moment. Discriminating against people based on their nationality so blatantly just feels instinctively wrong to me. 

Then again is this so different to sanctions which result in hardship for all Russian residents regardless of their personal action or inaction, belief or lack of belief in the propaganda? I suppose the difference was that in my head the sanctions are aimed at disabling the government and damaging the interests of very wealthy and influential Russians who might be in a position to persuade Putin to retreat, and the damage to the general population was more incidental than deliberate. Maybe that was just me being naive or misunderstanding things though. 

I'm not sure how productive it actually will be though. For the Russians that believe the propaganda then being banned from mountaineering abroad will just make them more insular and dependent on the internal propaganda that got them banned in the first place, and they're more likely to think the whole world has it in for Russia, and that Putin was right all along. For disillusioned Russians, will it make them more likely to protest? Maybe, maybe not, probably depends on their personal situation and beliefs. 

I'd be curious to see arguments about where this sort of thing would end too. Eg should we apply the same treatment to Chinese, Israeli, Syrian, Saudi Arabian, North Korean, Burmese mountaineers and so forth, until they manage to prevent their governments from doing Bad Things? Maybe even UK mountaineers should be banned until our government relinquishes claim to the Chagos Islands?

Countering my slippery sloping / whatabboutery, the Russia / Ukraine conflict is identified as special by David in the article :

"There are 43 ongoing armed conflicts globally, but this is the only invasion war since WWII," he said. "There hasn't been an outright invasion of this scale where one country invades another — all the other current conflicts are civil, tribal, religious or proxy wars. This needs to be taken seriously."

I'm not an expert like David is so I'm not sure what the precise definition of an invasion war is, but I'm not really convinced there's such a difference between this war and many of the other wars involving invasions since WWII, or that those other wars or Bad Things such as religious or ethnic discrimination are serious on a different scale to this war. 

In reply to pancakandchips: It might help to read the article before commenting. At no point does it talk about trips to or foreign expeditions in Russia.

In reply to YourNameHere:

Yes it would have been a good idea. I'm so off my face on painkillers I don't even remember commenting.

In reply to UKC/UKH Articles:

Tough one this. As a British person, should I be banned and excluded due to the fact 'my' government is selling weapons to the Saudi's that have been used to kill around a quarter of a million Yemeni's in the war there? Should the other wars in Afghan and Iraq have a bearing on what is right for me to do? I didn't like any of those things and I don't feel the government is 'my' government, I didn't put them there.

To be targetting Russian mountaineers somehow doesn't seem totally fair when many climbers who travel abroad will have a more balanced view of foriegners and national differences compared to somebody who has never left Russia and just see's the state run propaganda. Not totally sure this is the way forward. Can't blame the Ukrainian operators though.

In reply to AukWalk:

Israelis are already very limited where they can travel as quite a few countries just won't let Israeli passport holders in. Not sure the case now, but it used to be the case that some countries wouldn't let people from any country in if you had an Israeli stamp in your passport.