If it isn’t, it will be impossible to keep politics out of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

International sport could, moreover, find itself caught up in a process that underlines the ambivalence of much of the world regarding Russia’s increasingly aggressive pursuit of its foreign policy aims.

At first glance, resuscitation of the Friendship Games might appear an odd way for Russia to signal defiance in the face of the determination of some in the West to see the country excluded from elite international sport for as long as its assault on Ukraine continues.

The original iteration of the event, in 1984, was a strange affair, spread over nine different countries and stretching over two and a half months.

It did little if anything to detract from the success of Los Angeles 1984, which was boycotted by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its closest allies.

I have no recollection whatsoever of this inaugural Friendship Games impinging on my consciousness in any way at the time - and I was enough of a sports nut (and USSR nut) to have attended the 1984-85 Anatoly Karpov versus Garry Kasparov chess world title match in Moscow.

This is even though some of the standards set at those Games were high - the weightlifting competition, for example, held on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast at Varna, saw world records broken on 30 occasions.

Within a few months, Mikhail Gorbachev was at the helm in the Kremlin and the restructuring process which culminated with the break-up of the Soviet Union got under way.

Would a revived "World Friendship Games" prove any more effective at advancing the Russian world-view?

Actually, I think it could - by underlining how few developing countries are prepared to line up beside North America and much of Europe in the strongly pro-Ukraine ranks.

In 1984, athletes from only some 49 countries took part in one or more of the far-flung Friendship Games events.

This time the tally could easily exceed a hundred.

There seems little doubt that China and India, by far the world’s most populous countries, would want to be represented.

And I could see most of Africa and much of both Asia and Latin America taking part too.

As the former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb wrote in the Financial Times recently: "Only around 40 countries, mostly western, have placed sanctions on Russia. 

"Only two from Asia have done so, and none from either Africa or Latin America."

That statistic could provide guidance as to who is likely to be in and who out of a revived Friendship Games.

Even in Europe, the attitude towards the Games of various countries - Germany, Switzerland, Serbia - would be interesting to observe.

There are three main factors that I think would militate towards a relatively strong turnout among nations.

Firstly, for much of the world, the Russia/Ukraine hostilities must seem a distant conflict with little to be gained from taking sides.

Second, Russian oil and Russian influence in world affairs could be used as powerful tools to help leverage more support for Russia, or at least to dissuade more countries from coming out openly for Ukraine.

Lastly, it is easy to imagine that Vladimir Putin’s regime might offer subsidies or other incentives to encourage participation at the Games by as many countries as possible.

One might add that Russian officials, such as former World Cup bid leader Alexei Sorokin, have plenty of experience of darting around the world to further the country’s sports interests.

Sorokin contracted malaria for his pains while working on the winning Russia 2018 bid.

Could the International Olympic Committee (IOC) move to nip this proposed Friendship Games revival in the bud by, say, threatening to sanction the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) of countries whose athletes attend them?

Thomas Bach’s IOC has, after all, appeared less than enthusiastic about other suggested new multi-sports events, notably the United World Games proposed some years ago by Marius Vizer.

Acting against any 2024 World Friendship Games in such a way would, however, be a massively high-risk strategy, even assuming, for the sake of argument, that the will to act was present in Lausanne.

I suspect a more likely approach would be for the IOC to work quietly behind the scenes to limit any damage attributable to Moscow’s new initiative - one persuasive argument for anticipating this sort of soft-pedal approach is that by mid-2024, the next IOC Presidential election will be looming very large on the international sports horizon.

Even though the IOC could live - and thrive - without Russia for a time, it can ill afford to adopt too high-handed a strategy towards a revived Friendship Games if that risked in any way straining relations with the likes of India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Iran, Cuba et cetera, et cetera.

The IOC has a profoundly West/Central European culture - its prosperity comes largely from the United States, but if it is to continue to grow as a genuinely global institution, its future must increasingly involve large, underexploited territories such as India, China, Indonesia, Nigeria and the Middle East.

Unless the guns fall silent in the meantime - and let us hope fervently that they do - it will be fascinating to try to keep tabs on diplomatic manoeuvrings behind Russia’s new World Friendship Games project as the countdown towards Paris 2024 proceeds.