Recent reports suggesting that European Union countries were mulling a possible future sports boycott against Vladimir Putin's Russia triggered two immediate thoughts.

1. How quickly the world can change. It was only at the start of this year, after all, that the furore over LGBT rights appeared ultimately to have reinforced what has tended to be the mainstream view on sporting boycotts for the past couple of decades: that they mainly hurt the countries embarking on them, in particular their athletes.

While a number of political leaders found reasons to stay away from the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Opening Ceremony, at no stage did there seem more than the slenderest chance that any of the major teams would pull out of what was a spectacular Russian prestige event.

2. How extensively world sporting leaders have bought into Putin's grandiose national pride through sport project.

The Big Two international events for Russia are of course the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, which took place in Sochi earlier this year, and the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

But the list of major international championships earmarked for the country is formidably extensive.

This year, as well as Sochi 2014, there were World Championships in judo and fencing.

Oh and a debut Russian Formula One grand prix is to be held next month, also in Sochi.

Next year will bring the World Aquatics Championships to Kazan and (again) the World Fencing Championships, this time to Moscow, while the SportAccord convention, one of the sporting world's most important annual get-togethers, is due to be held in Russia for the second time in three years.

In 2016, it is the turn of ice-hockey and that sport's World Championship.

There has also been a World Athletics Championships along the way, in the capital Moscow in 2013.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin, pictured here with International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, was closely associated with the success of Sochi 2014
©AFP/Getty Images

As I write this, a ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine appears to have taken some of the immediate sting out of the diplomatic situation.

Yet there remains a sense that things could start sliding downhill again with little warning.

And if that happens, leading to a further, prolonged deterioration in relations between Russia and the West, it would be hard not to conclude that the sports sector is exposed to a worrying degree.

Yes, if push came to shove, alternative hosts could no doubt step into the breach for most or all of these events.

But such late rearrangements would have cost implications, as would pressing ahead with the events in Russia under circumstances inducing many leading athletes, and perhaps other stakeholders, to stay away.

Aspirations of expanding the Russian market for western sporting goods, moreover, would probably have to be put on ice.

Already, the sportswear group Adidas has decided to "significantly reduce its store opening plan in the market for 2014 and 2015, and to further increase the number of store closures", although it remains "very encouraged by increasing brand momentum".

Sportswear giants Adidas have announced plans to scale back their presence in Russia since the start of the Ukraine crisis ©AFP/Getty Images

Prudence, surely, would now dictate that sports property owners think very carefully before bestowing more future sports events on Russia. Not that they are as spoilt for choice, many of them, as they have sometimes been in the past.

Citizens in several comparatively cuddly and affluent western democracies are manifesting considerable scepticism about the local benefits of hosting big sporting events - especially when irritants such as road works and higher taxes are sometimes all too apparent.

And the street demonstrations in Brazil ahead of this summer's ultimately very successful World Cup were so widely reported that they may give pause for thought to other ambitious countries contemplating hosting sports events as a means of fostering national development.

Such reactions have been among factors propelling events to places such as China, the Gulf states and Russia, where well-resourced, efficient organisation is assured and the general public is less inclined to make a fuss.

The United States, at least, seems increasingly determined to win the right to host the Summer Olympics for the first time since 1996.

The appetite for staging other events that often accompanies such ambitions may be fortuitously-timed from the sports sector's point of view.

Having lost out to Qatar in the controversial race for the 2022 World Cup, the US looks well-placed to host that mega-event for a second time in the not too distant future as well.

One possible Russian project whose prospects have probably been dented by current tensions between Russia and the West is a St Petersburg bid for the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics.

With bids needing to be launched next year, the diplomatic situation would have to thaw markedly for such a venture to stand any chance of success.

And yet you could say that a St Petersburg Olympics - not in 2024, but between, say, 2028 and 2036 - would be the logical culmination of Putin's nation-building international sports policy.

Any hopes St Petersburg had of bidding for the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics has probably been ended by recent political events but the Russian city remains a contender in the future ©AFP/Getty Images

Clamping my rose-tinted spectacles firmly to my head, therefore, it could be argued that sport provides a motive for Putin, who can act more nimbly than the West with its cumbersome international policy-making apparatus, not to allow relations with Washington and Brussels to deteriorate beyond repair.

It would be almost unthinkable, even allowing for the sprinkling of Putin allies who hold prominent positions in the world of international sport, for St Petersburg to win the Games in the event of a flat-out new cold war.

Yet Putin knows how easily he has charmed international sports decision-makers in the past - both in Guatemala, where his English speech in 2007 did much to win the day for Sochi, and three years later in Zurich, where his decision to stay aloof from the futile, last-gasp World Cup lobbying appeared in retrospect both well-judged and dignified.

It would not take much, I suspect, for this artful, intimidating and powerful man to have the grandees of international sport once again feeding out of his hand.

For the time being, though, I would think that the list of prestigious international sports events that are heading for Russia will stop getting longer.