Other political analysts wondered whether the mounting scandals involving Russia might not begin to reverberate. There is the threat of new sanctions from the United States over election hacking, for example, as well as the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Moscow and a court case in the Netherlands over the shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner over Ukraine in 2014.

“There are too many fishy stories in the Kremlin’s relations with Europe and the U.S.,” said Aleksandr Morozov, a political analyst and frequent Kremlin critic, suggesting that the public would begin to trust the Kremlin less and Russia’s international reputation would further erode. “Moreover, the Kremlin does not want to investigate any of these scandals and publish its results, neither to its own society nor to the international community.”

State outlets like RT, the international television voice of the Russian government, went into overdrive attacking the international inquiry as an attempt to demean Russia, while ignoring questions about whether something was rotten in Russian sports. One of the main state broadcasters announced immediately that it would not show the games.

Hence most commentators thought public ire would likely focus on the international community, blamed again for singling out Russia unfairly, and perhaps the senior Russian sporting officials sanctioned by the I.O.C., but not on Mr. Putin himself.

Aleksandr Zubkov, who leads the federation of Russian bobsledders (and who was banned for life by the I.O.C.), said that it would be up to the individual athletes to decide whether to participate, as did Aleksei Kravtsov, the head of the skating union, according to the Interfax news agency.

Irina A. Avvakumova, a ski jumper, said she was inclined not to go but would consult her coaches.

“I don’t know how other athletes will react, but I was not training for many years to go and not participate for my own country,” she was quoted as saying by the Tass news agency.

Alexander Tikhonov, a former champion Soviet biathlete and previous head of the Russian association, encouraged athletes to go. “We have to prove to everyone that we’re the best,” he was quoted as saying by Championat.com, a sports website. “Competing without the anthem and the flag is not a treachery. We have to go and to give hell to everyone: to the Americans, to the whole world.”