Since 2022, we have been covering the Kremlin’s attempts at a “revenge match” on “Crimean football”, which boiled down to three main directions: blackmailing UEFA and FIFA by “leaving for the Asian Federation”, introducing “Crimean and Sevastopol teams” into the Russian second league and the creation of a “parallel football reality” in all occupied territories of Ukraine.
And if the Russian football bosses did not succeed with blackmail, and the illegal participation of “Sevastopol football players” in the second league is extremely difficult to make a “media event” for a long time, except for the case of an traffic accident with their bus in Chechnya, then the occupiers decided to focus on the fake “championship”.
In 2022, it looked like a “team competition” for fake “republics”, which, according to the corresponding criminal plan, should have included “teams” from Sukhumi, Tskhinvali, Tiraspol, as well as from the occupied Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk.
In September 2022, Russian deputy minister of sports Odes Baysultanov, during the so-called “I Football Forum” “Commonwealth” (“Sodruzhestvo”) in occupied Yevpatoriya, promised the creation of the so-called “United football championship” from 2023, in which teams allegedly “will be able to play” from Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine, including Crimea, as well as from “Abkhazia and South Ossetia.”
However, in 2023, nothing worked out for the occupiers, but now they have returned to this project, but without the “Caucasian republics,” and exclusively attracting “teams” from the occupied territories of Ukraine.
That same Baysultanov criminally “launched” this fake “unified football championship” “Commonwealth” (“Sodruzhestvo”) on March 30, and the occupiers will now play this show on the occupied peninsula until the fall.
At the same time, the aggressor “for some reason” does not advertise the number and names of the “championship” teams in advance, while the so-called “Zarya” from Lugansk and “Sevastopol-2” were “noted” in it; moreover, judging by the “announcements for 2025”, the occupiers do not yet have a “team” from the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhya region and they are planning for themselves a “milestone of 10 adult teams”.
Judging by the omissions of the aggressor, they have not yet found adult football players to participate in these scams, and therefore the mentioned “match” was played by “juniors”, and “Sevastopol-2” was generally formed precisely for this purpose. Thus, even the “Crimean football players”, who previously hid behind the “2014 UEFA compromise”, clearly do not want to participate in the new scam.
