Alexander Ovechkin, one of professional hockey's most celebrated figures, has stepped into explicitly political terrain by lending his image to United Russia's parliamentary campaign — a party structurally bound to President Vladimir Putin and his consolidation of power. The endorsement, released as Russia prepared for weekend elections, is not merely a celebrity cameo but a deliberate act of political alignment by a man who inhabits two worlds simultaneously: the ice of Washington and the political gravity of Moscow. It raises the perennial question of what obligations — and what silences — f