WASHINGTON — The son of Moscow makes his living in Washington, cheered nightly by locals who think little of his country.

He has, for a dozen years now, insinuated himself into the city, becoming its most cherished Russian import — digging out of snowstorms that reminded him of home, holding court at Russia House, the vodka-soaked lounge where he once lost a tooth. Most important, he became one of the most accomplished hockey players in the United States in a generation, scoring goals for the city’s championship-starved Washington Capitals.

“My second home,” the star player, Alexander Ovechkin, said of the city.

But about that first home.

In a political season of investigations into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election and the ever-invisible hand of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Ovechkin — a LeBron James-style prodigy with three M.V.P. awards, impish charisma and a gaptoothed grin — has glided into the zeitgeist with his own Washington mystery: He is the stickhandling hero who may or may not be a witting font of Kremlin propaganda in the United States’ capital.

“It’s all about country,” Mr. Ovechkin said in an interview, semicryptically, from across a conference room table at the team’s practice facility in Arlington, Va. “I just want to do my best for my country.”