The 2024 World Youth Festival in Sochi, as well as many other national sport events, was exploited to the full extent by the Russian government. It is an interesting case study to discuss how the military intervention in Ukraine affected the propagandistic dimension of Russian soft power, especially as specific narratives are still circulating within mega events held in Russia during the war. The thesis is that the war against Ukraine promoted the hybridisation of soft power and counter-normative propaganda, which manifested itself in the fusion of hard and soft power, narratives of politicisation and depoliticisation, securitisation and de-securitisation, and left-wing and conservative ideologies. The empirical base consists of video coverage of the WYF (public lectures, meetings and press conferences), totalling 28 video recordings: some 15 h in both Russian and English.