Premiership Players Protest Russian Invasion Of Ukraine

Opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Saturday also spilled over into the United Kingdom (UK)’s Premier League football programme.

At the weekend’s match between Manchester City and Everton, the Everton players came out draped in Ukrainian flags while Manchester City wore shirts bearing the words “No War”.

On his part, Thomas Tuchel,  head coach of Chelsea, owned by the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, who last week was named in parliament as one of 35 oligarchs and “enablers” of the Putin regime, even suggested that he would be “happy to lose” Sunday’s Carabao Cup final against Liverpool.

“Given the situation, that we have a war, this is simply not important enough,” said Tuchel. “It, unfortunately, will not help, but, if it would, I am happy to lose the match.”

On Saturday night, Abramovich announced he was handing “stewardship” of the club to the trustees of its charitable foundation.

In London, the Ministry of Defence announced that Challenger 2 tanks and armoured vehicles from the Royal Welsh Battlegroup had arrived in Estonia from Germany, with further equipment and about 1,000 troops following over the coming days.

The Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, said the aim was to stop invasions of NATO member states: “Alongside our NATO allies, these deployments constitute a credible deterrent to stop Russian aggression threatening the territorial sovereignty of member states.”

On Saturday, Russian advances on major cities, including Kyiv, appeared to have slowed or ground to a halt. Ukraine’s defence ministry claimed Russia had suffered more than 3,000 casualties and that many other soldiers had been captured.

UK and other diplomats said a decision by China to abstain rather than back its ally Russia in a UN resolution on the invasion was being viewed as a huge victory for the west. Beijing called on both Moscow and Kyiv to find a negotiated settlement.

Ukraine’s Health Minister reported on Saturday that 198 people had been killed, including three children, and that more than 1,000 others had been wounded since the Russian offensive started before dawn on Thursday with massive air and missile strikes and troops forging into Ukraine from the north, east and south.

Among the Kyiv buildings hit in the latest wave of Russian strikes was a high-rise residential building. Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, posted an image showing a gaping hole in one side of the building and damaged apartments on several floors. – With The Guardian report