What about sports ? Has politics overtaken sports again ? How should one read the refusal of Russia to sign the NHL-IIHF hockey transfer agreement every other member country has signed ? Is this the government centrally — it is said that Putin leans on Fetisov - or is this the desire of individual club owners to get transfer fees like those in European football (which, in my humble opinion, the NHL can’t support)? I understand that with the wealth of some Russian hockey club owners, there are some players being paid NHL-level salaries. And I understand the desire to have a quality local product. However, the Elite League is not on the NHL level. Ant the local product is not nearly as competitively or economically successful as the NHL. What is the holdup?

Tthe Russian hockey federation’s refusal to sign the NHL-IIHF transfer agreement seems to have nothing to do with politics, at least at its root. You’re right — what the Russian clubs are asking for is a transfer fee, on a case-by-case basis, rather than the traditional NHL-IIHF arrangement, wherein the North American clubs pay a small flat fee for every player they sign from a European club.
The whole thing has been a real bargain for the NHL as long as it’s been in effect, which is many years.
But Russian clubs understandably believe that in real market terms, talents like Evgeni Malkin and Alexander Ovechkin are worth far more than a token $200,000; if their signings had been conducted like every football (soccer) signing on earth, Metallurg Magnitogorsk and Dinamo Moscow would’ve gotten maybe $10 million dollars each.

However, because of Russian labor law, those players were free to leave their teams after giving a simple two weeks’ notice — all any Russian worker needs to change his or her job, a holdover from workers’ rights laws dating to Soviet times.
But this is where politics starts to enter into it: over the summer the Duma recognized how one-sided the hockey economics were and passed a law that basically tied hockey players to the contracts they sign with Russian clubs.