Is it now time to question Russia as World Cup hosts?

Since the award of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, one has attracted more attention than the other one.

The 2022 World Cup in Qatar has always looked like a tremendously awful idea, and four years on, still makes no sense. Be it the ban on alcohol, gays and Jews, the physically prohibitive climate, the slave labour and deaths in its construction, the idea of financial corruption and more, this has made it a strange decision.

There has been not quite so much written about the 2018 World Cup, which has been awarded to Russia. This is despite it hitting the news for some unedifying things in the run up to last year's World Athletics Championships, which saw a controversial and incoherent anti-gay bill introduced, and the subjugation of political opponents such as Pussy Riot.

This year's Winter Olympics were meant to be a great advert for modern Russia as a place for hosting international sporting events, yet it failed to convince. For starts, the Olympics that get less worldwide attention were the most expensive ever, with over $50billion splurged on stadia for the games.

There are allegations most of the money was creamed off by Vladimir Putin and his friends. The money also didn't seem to pay for much in the way of hotels, given journalists who arrived in Sochi ahead of the opening ceremony reported a hilarious wave of weirdness in their hotels.

While the games themselves served to be moderately entertaining, they played out at the same time as geo-political tension. Following the 2004 Orange Revolution, a pro-Russia government had been running things in neighbouring Ukraine, but another revolution that started in late 2013 saw the government toppled and a new one installed.

This led to a hotly-contested independence referendum in Crimea, which has now been absorbed by Russia. Since then, there has been further tension that was going on while the Winter Olympics were happening, and is still continuing in Eastern Ukraine.

Although not reported as much by many Western media outlets - indeed, only Vice and Polish newspapers appear to be that bothered - things have been barbaric in the region.

This is a criticism for both sides. People who supported Russia have been burned alive in villages earlier this year amid concerns of the neo-Nazi parties who make up the new Ukrainian government.

Then the game changed again. Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur had set off last Thursday with 298 people on board, and was ended in a destructive fireball over farmland in Eastern Ukraine after (most likely) being hit by a Russian-made missile.

The investigation by air travel authorities is still ongoing, but a lot of evidence is pointed that the pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine received missiles and mistakenly downed a civilian jet thinking it was a Ukrainian Air Force plane.

Since the MH17 crash, two more UAF fighter jets have been downed, while another two had been downed in the week before the crash. But there is obviously huge significance to MH17 being downed - this was one of 300 civilian air jets flying over Ukraine that day, and was indeed one of four in that area of Ukraine at the time. A Singapore Airlines flight heading for London, for example, was less than 20 miles away when the crash happened.

This tragedy is certainly at a bad time for Malaysian Airlines, which made sharp financial losses in 2013 and was still reeling from the disappearance of flight MH370 in March. There is speculation the airline could even go out of business before the end of the year, while a 16% drop in bookings has been reported.

As well as the economic strife for MH17, football is in a backseat position to the many tensions that have arisen in the past eight days. There is much sniping in the USA at increasing sanctions against Russian businessmen and corporations, while political arguing in Europe is rife after revelations that defence contractors based in the UK, France and Germany are still selling Russia weaponry.

There is also the tension between Russia and others. Russia continues to deny direct responsibility for the plane downing, even after angry phone calls from Barack Obama, David Cameron, Dutch PM Mark Rutte and Australian leader Tony Abbott.

Meanwhile, Ukraine and Russia's war continues, with video emerging this week of large volleys of missiles being fired from both sides.

In the wake of this, and without prompting, FIFA has pledged full support to Russia's continued hosting of the 2018 World Cup. Their argument is that boycotts and tournament reallocation would not work.

This presumably has nothing to do with the fact that Sepp Blatter and Vladimir Putin were sat next to one another during the World Cup final two weeks ago, with Russia already building and renovating stadiums. Indeed, at $40billion, the money spent so far makes Russia 2018 the most expensive World Cup ever, although Qatar is forecast to spend three times as much.

There is interesting talk first raised by members of the German government that it would hurt Putin more to lose the World Cup hosting rights than further economic sanctions, as the EU is currently drawing up.

Noted football fan and German chancellor Angela Merkel has opted not to go along with this - presumably as Germany and Russia have a big trade relationship, and sanctions would also harm the German economy.

But this is certainly another hard place for FIFA. After being the target of vitriolic anger for the year before the World Cup, and still facing more-than legitimate criticism for its still moronic Qatar decision, this is a tricky hot potato to mesh.

After all, football as a force for peace is something that hasn't exactly worked for Ukraine. Two summers ago, the Donbass Arena in Donetsk was hosting fixtures as part of Euro 2012, which was co-held in Ukraine and Poland. Back then, there was a peaceful tone, with the stadium host six fixtures and

Now, the stadium is abandoned as the city's championship-winning team Shakhtar is unable to safely use the city given the political fighting centered around it, while six of its players have refused to return home after a pre-season friendly in France.

Stripping Russia's World Cup hosting rights or boycotting the tournament as a whole would certainly make big political news, even if Russia remains more suitable to host the tournament than the comically inappropriate Qatar. It is certainly a discussion worth having, and one that has to be held in the sporting community in the wake of a monumental international tragedy. Whether it happens or not is one for the next four years to decide.