“Would you join Zenit Saint Petersburg if they offered you EUR 5 million a year?” Ukrainian footballer Roman Yaremchuk didn’t hedge or hesitate when asked this question in a late 2019 interview. “No,” he answered. “It’s a great question, but in today’s situation, I wouldn’t go. One hundred percent. I have everything I need in life and that is enough for me.”
Yaremchuk, who currently stars for Gent in the Belgian First Division and the Ukrainian national team, clearly has no qualms addressing the politically charged subject of Ukrainian footballers playing for Russian clubs. His comments generated headlines in the Ukrainian sporting press and beyond, but he does not speak for all Ukrainians on the subject. On the contrary, many of Yaremchuk’s compatriots support the right of players to join clubs in a country that is waging an undeclared war against Ukraine. There should be no politics in sport, they argue.
The debate over Ukrainian footballers playing in Russia is an extension of a broader discussion that regularly preoccupies much of Ukrainian society. What sort of relationship should Ukraine pursue with today’s Russia? Amid an ongoing conflict that has torn apart intimate ties between the two countries stretching back generations, where should the line of disconnect between Ukraine and Russia now be drawn? Should it be exclusively at the governmental level, or should it also extend to a freeze in all cultural or sporting relations?
