The Russian Ministry of Sports is planning a league for 2023 in which clubs from the occupied Ukrainian territories and from the unrecognized quasi-states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia would take part. The League of Occupied Crimea, which has existed since 2015 with little success, serves as an example.
The Russian Ministry of Sport is planning an unusual football league for the coming year. During a consultation in the so-called and Russian-controlled Donetsk People's Republic, Deputy Sports Minister Odes Baysultanov announced that he wanted to hold a joint championship for the first time between March and November 2023, in which, according to media reports, up to 14 teams from the two People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, who Crimean Peninsula annexed by Russia, the partially occupied southern Ukrainian districts of Cherson and Zaporizhia, and the internationally unrecognized quasi-republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In addition, the teams of the Russian universities could also be added.
Baysultanov takes the occupied Crimea as an example, where there has been a separate football league, the so-called Premier League, and a larger student championship since 2015. Here, too, there is speculation that the top division is called the Premjer-Liga, but the whole construct is to be sold as a "community league". In addition to the Premier League, however, they want to concentrate on the two oldest youth classes, which would have a similar structure. The new championship will be hosted on the initiative of the Russian Ministry of Sport, but it is said not to be directly related to the Russian Football Union (RFU), which despite the exclusions of clubs and national teams from international competitions due to the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, is a member of FIFA and UEFA remains.
It is quite possible that a copy of the Ukrainian record champions Shakhtar Donetsk would take part in this new league, whose "revival" Denis Puschilin, the head of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic, recently announced. Well, planning such a championship with the participation of the Kherson and Zaporizhia districts, for example, is likely to prove difficult anyway for a number of reasons, while Ukraine is preparing and slowly starting a counter-offensive in the south.
Kherson is almost completely under Russian occupation, but Ukraine is making slow progress in the north of the district. In the Zaporizhia district, the Russians control the smaller part of the region and are far from capturing the city of Zaporizhia itself. Despite these military prospects, there are many indications that Russia has plans to annex both the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics and the occupied southern territories of Ukraine - possibly as part of the much-hyped referendums in September.
So why would Moscow need a structure independent of the RFU? The answer lies in the Crimean precedent that Russia's deputy sport minister is fond of portraying as a kind of success story. When the Black Sea peninsula was illegally annexed in spring 2014, the clubs from Sevastopol, Simferopol and Yalta played in Russia's third-tier league for six months before they were expelled following a UEFA decision. For such a step, Russia should actually have received a commitment from the Ukrainian federation, which was completely unrealistic.
UEFA, which at least officially wants to take care of the development of football, subsequently declared the occupied peninsula a so-called "special zone" that reports directly to the European association. UEFA officials even visited Crimea itself and gave participants in the talks hope that clubs from an independent Crimean league could take part in international competitions in the future. A Crimean national team was also dreamed of.
Only: The Crimean League is not independent at all. Six out of eight founding clubs were artificially founded and financed by the Ministry of Sports, the then Minister of Sports Vitaly Mutko actively participated in the founding of the Crimean Federation - and the Crimean League would not survive without Moscow's financial participation. It was important for the Russian sports elite not to face sanctions from UEFA and FIFA because of the peninsula's clubs, while at the same time supporting the illusion that football was being developed and promoted in the annexed Crimea.
In reality, however, football in Crimea has taken a huge step backwards. While the peninsula has never been an absolute football stronghold of Ukraine, it is where Tavria Simferopol, independent Ukraine's first champions, came from - and before the start of the Russian annexation, FC Sevastopol dreamed of playing Europa League qualifiers . All of that collapsed after the Russian occupation, and audience interest plummeted. The Russians now want to create a similar structure in other occupied territories - with the same motivation to prevent UEFA sanctions and take care of football at the same time. Because the Russian association is not giving up hope that the Russian clubs will be able to take part in the Champions League again in a while.
