Russian Invasion of Ukraine (2022)

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      Inside the Chelsea Sale: Deep Pockets, Private Promises and Side Deals

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      Britain’s government has cleared the sale of the Premier League soccer team. But to win approval, the new owners had to agree to a set of unusual conditions.LONDON — The British government on Wednesday gave its blessing to the purchase of Chelsea F.C., one of European soccer’s blue-ribbon teams, by an American-led investment group after deciding it had sufficient assurances that none of the proceeds from the record sale price — $3.1 billion — would flow to the club’s Russian owner.The government’s approval signaled the end of not only the most expensive deal in sports history but possibly the most fraught, cryptic and political, too.In the three months since the Russian oligarch who owns Chelsea, Roman Abramovich, hurriedly put his team on the market, the club’s fate has played out not only on the fields of some of world soccer’s richest competitions but in the corridors of power at Westminster and the soaring towers of Wall Street. And all of it is against the backdrop of crippling financial sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.“We are now satisfied that the full proceeds of the sale will not benefit Roman Abramovich or any other sanctioned individual,” the government said in a statement. The path to a deal has entangled a scarcely probable cast of characters — private equity funds and anonymous offshore trusts; lawmakers in Britain and Portugal; an octogenarian Swiss billionaire and the American tennis star Serena Williams; an enigmatic Russian oligarch and a little known Portuguese rabbi — and featured a contested passport, wartime peace talks and even reports of an attempted poisoning.Its end leaves as many questions as answers. All that can be said for certain is that a group led by the Los Angeles Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly and largely financed by the private equity firm Clearlake will now control Chelsea, a six-time English and two-time European champion, and Abramovich will not.The American investor Todd Boehly leads a group that is now set to complete its purchase of Chelsea.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAbramovich first indicated his intention to sell Chelsea — the most high-profile of his assets by some distance — almost as soon as the Russian army crossed into Ukraine in late February, and only a week before Britain and the European Union identified him as a key ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and froze his assets.Completing a deal, though, has proved fiendishly convoluted. The final obstacle to a sale was resolved only this week, when lawmakers in Britain were sufficiently satisfied that a $2 billion loan owed to an offshore trust, believed to be controlled by Abramovich, had been cleared. British government officials then tried to reassure their counterparts in Portugal, which had controversially granted Abramovich a Portuguese passport with a rabbi’s help in 2018, and the European Union, which had imposed its own sanctions on Abramovich in March. Both must also approve the sale because of his Portuguese citizenship.But the loan was not the only complication faced by Raine, the New York-based investment bank recruited by Abramovich to handle the sale. The agreement with Boehly’s group came with a web of conditions, some set by the British government, some by Raine and some by Abramovich himself, all of them striking in the context of the sale of a sports team.Better Understand the Russia-Ukraine WarHistory and Background: Here’s what to know about Russia and Ukraine’s relationship and the causes of the conflict.How the Battle Is Unfolding: Russian and Ukrainian forces are using a bevy of weapons as a deadly war of attrition grinds on in eastern Ukraine.Outside Pressures: Governments, sports organizations and businesses are taking steps to punish Russia. Here are some of the sanctions adopted so far and a list of companies that have pulled out of the country.Stay Updated: To receive the latest updates on the war in your inbox, sign up here. The Times has also launched a Telegram channel to make its journalism more accessible around the world.All four prospective suitors identified by Raine as serious contenders — Boehly’s group; one headed by the British businessman Martin Broughton that included Williams and the Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton among its partners; another financed by Steve Pagliuca, the owner of the N.B.A.’s Boston Celtics; and one from the Ricketts family, who control baseball’s Chicago Cubs — were asked not only to pay a jaw-dropping price for the team but also to commit to a number of pledges, including as much as $2 billion more in investments in Chelsea.The club’s suitors were told, for instance, that they cannot sell their stake within the first decade of ownership and that they must earmark $125 million for the club’s women’s team; invest millions more in the club’s academy and training facilities; and commit to rebuilding Stamford Bridge, Chelsea’s aging West London stadium.Chelsea’s new owners agreed to several conditions, including sizable investments in the club’s decorated women’s team.Michael Regan/Getty ImagesAt the same time, Abramovich insisted that all the proceeds from the sale would go toward a new charity to benefit the victims of the war in Ukraine. To ensure he does not gain control of that money, the British government will require it first be placed in a frozen bank account that it controls. Only then will it vet all the plans for the fund being drawn up by Mike Penrose, a former head of a branch of the United Nations children’s charity UNICEF, and issue a special license that will allow the charity to take control of the funds.“We will now begin the process of ensuring the proceeds of the sale are used for humanitarian causes in Ukraine, supporting victims of the war,” the government said in its statement.The charity was just one of the peculiarities of the deal arranged by Joe Ravitch, the Raine co-founder who directed the sale.The new owners also will not be permitted to take dividends or management fees or load the team with debt — terms that bankers related to the sale have described as “anti-Glazer clauses,” a reference to the unpopular owners of Manchester United who took control of the club in a leveraged buyout in 2005.Several people close to the process said Boehly’s bid was eventually selected from the group of wealthy suitors because of its willingness to abide by the clauses. (At least one of those people, who worked on the bid backed by Pagliuca, said their group withdrew from the running because of the nature of the conditions.)The Premier League has already signed off on the Chelsea sale, announcing Tuesday that it had vetted and approved the new owners “subject to the government issuing the required sale license and the satisfactory completion of final stages of the transaction.”It is not clear, though, quite what will happen if Boehly and his partners choose to renege on any of the conditions once they have control of the club. Any oversight role will fall on the charity, the only outside entity still inextricably linked to both Chelsea and Abramovich, or the continued influence of two key Abramovich lieutenants who hope to remain in their posts under the new owners.Both of those executives — the club chairman Bruce Buck and Marina Granovskaia, a Russian-born businesswoman who rose from being Abramovich’s personal assistant to the most senior official response for soccer trades at Chelsea — will earn at least $12.5 million for their work on the sale. The commissions to management, totaling as much as $50 million, and the fee to Ravitch, believed to be between 0.5 and 1 percent of the deal’s value, will be paid from the club’s balance sheet and not from the sale funds, according to a person familiar with the structure of the deal.Abramovich on a banner at Stamford Bridge. Beloved by fans for his spending on the team, he is barred from receiving any money from its sale. Clive Rose/Getty ImagesBritish government officials had clashed with Chelsea executives and financiers about creating a legally binding resolution to prevent Abramovich from getting access to the money he so publicly said he was willing to waive.At issue was a company called Camberley International Investments, run by a Cypriot trustee on behalf of what British officials believe was Abramovich and his children. Camberley lent $2 billion to Fordstam, the company through which Abramovich controlled Chelsea, to finance its spending and operations. Camberley’s claim against Fordstam has now been resolved, and its trustee has recently resigned.It was only at that point, with a May 31 deadline for the completion of the sale looming, that Britain’s government moved to approve the deal.For Chelsea’s fans, the sale draws an end to a season that at times blurred into absurdity. The sanctions imposed on Abramovich — and by extension Chelsea — affected everything from the team’s travel to the printing and sale of game programs. Thousands of empty seats dotted Stamford Bridge during games over the final months of the season after a ban on new ticket sales, and roster turmoil loomed because of a moratorium on the signing and sale of players.That will now be lifted, with Chelsea’s players and Manager Thomas Tuchel said to be urgently seeking clarity from Boehly and his group on their plans. At least two key defenders are slated to leave Chelsea this summer, and at least two more players — including the club captain, Cesar Azpilicueta — are expected to follow.Defender Antonio Rüdiger, unable to negotiate a new contract, announced he would leave Chelsea for Real Madrid. Other key players may depart this summer, too.Alastair Grant/Associated PressBoehly, a regular presence at Chelsea games since his takeover was announced on May 6, has broadly said he would like to maintain Chelsea as a major force in soccer. It is unlikely, though, that a group largely backed by a private equity firm will prove quite so indulgent as Abramovich was as an owner.In almost two decades at Chelsea, Abramovich was a familiar but all but silent presence at Stamford Bridge, happy to let his money do the talking. Under his leadership, Chelsea was transformed into a true European superpower, winning five Premier League titles and two Champions League crowns by employing a succession of A-list managers and investing billions of dollars in players.His largess changed Chelsea but also soccer as a whole, ushering in an era of unfettered spending that saw transfer fees and player salaries rise to levels unthinkable only a few years earlier. It also came at a price that Chelsea’s income, no matter how much it grew in those years of plenty, could not match. Throughout his tenure, Abramovich used his vast personal fortune to subsidize losses that ran as high as $1 million a week.Yet just as Abramovich’s arrival in 2003 opened the door to a new era for English soccer, his departure serves as a bookmark, too.While scarcity may explain part of the rush to pay a premium for Chelsea — soccer’s biggest teams are rarely up for sale, after all — it is not clear when, or how, a group of private equity investors who navigated such treacherous, confounding waters to get control of the club can start to realize a return on their investment. More

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      As the French Open Begins, the War in Ukraine Roils the Locker Room

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      “I feel like it’s not united,” Iga Swiatek, the top-ranked women’s player, said of a decision by the tours to punish Wimbledon for barring players from Russian and Belarus.PARIS — The idea by the men’s and women’s tennis tours was to take a strong stand against Wimbledon’s decision to keep out players from Russia and Belarus, then let tennis and competition move the conversation away from politics and the invasion of Ukraine.It has not worked out that way.On Monday, the second day of the French Open, the politics of tennis and Russia reared its head once more. The professional tours’ announcement Friday night that they would not award rankings points this year at Wimbledon, essentially turning the most prestigious event in tennis into an exhibition and punishing players who did well there last year, has roiled the sport, igniting a sharp debate over the game’s role in a deeply unpopular war and dominating the conversation at the year’s second Grand Slam.Lesia Tsurenko of Ukraine spoke emotionally about the invasion, saying it has made her care little about winning or losing. Iga Swiatek, the world No. 1, talked of the sport being in disarray. Naomi Osaka, one of the biggest stars, said she was leaning toward skipping Wimbledon if the decision not to award rankings points for match victories there stands.“I feel like it’s not united,” Swiatek said after defeating Tsurenko, 6-2, 6-0, in her opening match while wearing a Ukraine pin on her cap, as she has for the past three months. “It’s all the people who are organizing tournaments, like, for example, WTA, ATP and I.T.F., they all have separate views, and it’s not joint. We feel that in the locker room a little bit, so it’s pretty hard.”Swiatek’s comments came shortly after Tsurenko described how lost she has been since late February. Tsurenko, who was ranked as high as No. 23 in 2019, said she at first wanted simply to go home and figure out how she could help with the war effort, but she decided to keep playing and competed in important tournaments in Miami and Indian Wells, Calif.Then, after an early loss at a tournament in Marbella, Spain, and no tournament on her schedule for another three weeks, she realized she had nowhere to live or train. With the help of another player from Ukraine, Marta Kostyuk, she landed at the Piatti Tennis Center in Italy, but the psychological challenge remains of balancing her career while her country faces an existential threat.“I just want to enjoy every match, but at the same time, I don’t feel that I care too much,” she said. “I’m trying to find this balance between just go on court and don’t care versus try to care. In some cases it helps.”Tsurenko spoke emotionally about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying it had made her care little about winning or losing.Thibault Camus/Associated PressAfter feeling emboldened by Wimbledon’s decision to bar players from Russia and Belarus, Tsurenko and her compatriots were disheartened by the WTA’s decision to strike back.“When it’s not in your country you don’t really understand how terrible it is,” Tsurenko said. Compared with what she and her country have been through, giving up the chances for rankings points seems like a small price to pay, she said. “For them, they feel like they are losing their job,” she said of the players who are barred. “I also feel many bad things. I feel a lot of terrible things, and I think, compared to that, losing a chance to play in one tournament is nothing.”She hates the propaganda used by the Russian government to disparage her country. She said no more than five players had expressed their support for her since the start of the war. She dreads being drawn against a Russian player in a tournament.Dayana Yastremska, who is also from Ukraine and who also lost Monday, said the decision to withhold points for Wimbledon was not fair to players from Ukraine.“We are not a happy family right now,” said Yastremska, who still does not have a training base and was unsure where she would spend the next weeks.In an interview this month, Steve Simon, the chief executive of the WTA Tour, said the organization had to live up to its principle that access to tournaments for players should be based on merit alone. He also said that discriminating against a player because of the actions of her country’s government was not acceptable.“I can’t imagine what the Ukrainian people are going through and feeling at this moment, and I feel bad for these athletes who are being asked to take the blame for someone else’s actions,” Simon said.Russian players have expressed disappointment in Wimbledon’s decision and appreciation for the tours’ support in protecting what they view as their right to play, though no player has sought relief in the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Jeffrey Kessler, a lawyer with experience in right-to-play cases, said tennis players from Russia and Belarus would most likely have a strong case.“We are professional athletes, we put effort every day in what we do and basically want to work,” said Karen Khachanov of Russia, who won his opening-round match Sunday and was a semifinalist at Wimbledon last year.One of the few players not to express an opinion was Victoria Azarenka of Belarus, a former world No. 1 and member of the WTA Players’ Council, but her distress over the disagreement was clear.Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“I say one thing, it’s going to be criticized; I say another thing, it’s going to be criticized,” said Azarenka, who once had a close relationship with President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus.In its statement Friday, the ATP said its rules and agreements existed to protect the rights of all players as a whole: “Unilateral decisions of this nature, if unaddressed, set a damaging precedent for the rest of the tour. Discrimination by individual tournaments is simply not viable on a tour that operates in more than 30 countries.”The tangible impact of the ATP and WTA decisions on the sport was evident Monday as Osaka made her feelings known about possibly skipping Wimbledon. She is not a fan of grass surfaces to begin with, and without an opportunity to improve her ranking, she might struggle to find motivation.“The intention was really good, but the execution is kind of all over the place,” Osaka said.Swiatek, who is from Poland, which has supported Ukraine perhaps more than any other country, said locker room conversations, which might once have been about changing balls during matches, have shifted to discussions of war, peace and politics. She stopped short of overtly stating her position, but she hardly masked her sentiments.“All the Russian and Belarusian players are not responsible in what’s going on in their country,” Swiatek said. “But on the other hand, the sport has been used in politics and we are kind of public personas and we have some impact on people. It would be nice if the people who are making decisions were making decisions that are going to stop Russia’s aggression.” More

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      Tennis Tours Penalize Wimbledon Over Ban on Russian Players

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      PARIS — The men’s and women’s tennis tours responded to Wimbledon’s ban on Russian and Belarusian players on Friday by stripping the event of ranking points this year, the most significant rebuke to date of efforts by global sports organizations to ostracize individual Russian athletes as punishment for their country’s invasion of Ukraine.It is a move without precedent in tennis, and without the points, Wimbledon, the oldest of the four Grand Slam tournaments, will technically be an exhibition event, bringing no ranking boost to those who excel on its pristine lawns this year.“The ability for players of any nationality to enter tournaments based on merit, and without discrimination is fundamental to our Tour,” the ATP said in a statement, saying that the ban undermined its ranking system.The International Tennis Federation, a governing body that operates separately from the tours, also announced it would remove ranking points from the junior and wheelchair events at Wimbledon this year.Though Wimbledon, for now, is the only one of the four major tournaments to ban Russians and Belarusians, the power play by the tours could lead to countermeasures, including the possibility of Grand Slam events considering an alternative ranking system or aligning to make more decisions independently of the tours.Organizers of Wimbledon, a grass-court tournament and British cultural institution that begins on June 27, announced the ban on Russian and Belarusian players last month in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which was undertaken with the support of Belarus. Other British grass-court tournaments that are staged in June, including the Wimbledon prep events at Eastbourne and at Queen’s Club in London, have announced similar bans.So have sports as diverse as soccer, auto racing, track and field and ice hockey. Russia has been stripped of the hosting rights to events and has seen its teams ejected from major competitions like soccer’s World Cup. But only a few sports, notably figure skating and track and field, have barred individual athletes from Russia and Belarus from competing.Both tours condemned the invasion of Ukraine but argued that individual athletes should not be prevented from competing, in the words of WTA chief executive Steve Simon, “solely because of their nationalities or the decisions made by the governments of their countries.”But Sergiy Stakohvsky, a recently retired Ukrainian men’s player now in the Ukrainian military, expressed bitterness at the decision, calling it a “shameful day in tennis” in a post on Twitter.Standing by its ban, Wimbledon expressed “deep disappointment” and said stripping points was “disproportionate” in light of the pressure it was under from the British government.The ATP’s and WTA’s move was made after extensive internal debate and despite considerable pushback from players. A sizable group of men’s and women’s players was gathering support for a petition in favor of retaining Wimbledon’s points before the tours made their announcements. But removing the points is expected to have little effect on the tournament’s bottom line.The world’s top players who are not from Russia and Belarus are still expected to participate. Novak Djokovic, the world No. 1 men’s player from Serbia and a six-time Wimbledon champion, made it clear on Sunday after winning the Italian Open in Rome that he would not support skipping the event in protest even if he remained against the decision to bar the Russian and Belarusian players.“A boycott is a very aggressive thing,” Djokovic said. “There are much better solutions.”This year’s Wimbledon champions will still play in front of big crowds, lift the same trophies hoisted by their predecessors and have their names inscribed on the honor roll posted inside the clubhouse of the All England Club. They will be considered Grand Slam champions although it remains unclear whether Wimbledon will maintain prize money at its usual levels.Stripping points will have consequences on the sport’s pecking order. Daniil Medvedev, a Russian ranked No. 2, is now in excellent position to displace No. 1 Novak Djokovic after Wimbledon because Djokovic’s 2,000 points for winning Wimbledon last year will come off his total without being replaced. Medvedev, who reached the round of 16 at Wimbledon last year, will only lose 180 points.The leadership of the ATP, including its player council, which includes stars like Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, ultimately decided that it was important to dissuade tournaments from barring players — now or in the future — based on political concerns.“How do you draw the line of when you ban players and when you don’t?” Yevgeny Kafelnikov, a Russian and a former No. 1 singles player, said in a telephone interview from Moscow.Unlike Wimbledon, the lead-in events in Britain have retained their ranking points despite being formally part of the tours. Wimbledon, as a Grand Slam event, operates independently but does have agreements with the tours on many levels. But the ATP and WTA chose not to strip points from the British lead-in events because other European tournaments were still open to Russian and Belarusian players during those three weeks of the season. The WTA did announce that it was putting the British tour events in Nottingham, Birmingham and Eastbourne on probation because of the ban.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 4Russia’s punishment of Finland. More

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      Chelsea F.C. Says It Will Sell to Boehly’s U.S.-Led Group

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      Chelsea, the Premier League soccer team whose sale was forced after the Russian oligarch who bankrolled its success was placed under crippling sanctions, will be bought by a consortium led by Todd Boehly, an American billionaire who is a part-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the club said on Saturday.The price of 2.5 billion pounds, or $3.1 billion, would be the most ever paid for a team in any sport. The sale, one of the more unusual in modern sports history, still requires the approval of the British government, which imposed the sanctions on the club’s owner, Roman Abramovich, and froze his assets, including Chelsea, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.In a statement posted on its website early Saturday, Chelsea said the proceeds from the sale would be placed into a frozen British bank account, with the intention that all of the funds will eventually go to charitable causes, as Abramovich has promised.In addition to the sale price, Chelsea said, Boehly’s group had pledged to invest 1.75 billion pounds in the club, some of it for much-needed stadium renovations.Boehly’s group is being backed by the American investment firm Clearlake and also includes Hansjorg Wyss, a Swiss businessman, and Mark Walter, an American financier who serves as a co-owner and the chairman of the Dodgers.The decision capped two tumultuous months for Chelsea, its fans and Abramovich, who said on March 2 that he had reluctantly agreed to part with the team, just as Britain’s government was moving to impose restrictions on his fortune and his businesses.The sale process was accelerated once the government formally froze Abramovich’s assets, part of a wider set of sanctions imposed on a group of wealthy Russians with ties to Moscow after the war in Ukraine began. The government has called Abramovich a close ally of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.Roman Abramovich has owned Chelsea since 2003.John Sibley/ReutersChelsea has been in a kind of limbo ever since, operating under a special license issued by the government, which comes with strict conditions that have severely affected its business. The team is currently unable to buy or sell players in the summer transfer market, nor can it sell tickets or merchandise to its supporters. Its spending has been severely restricted, affecting everything from the team’s travel to the printing and sale of programs.The restrictions, meant to ensure that no money flows to Abramovich, will only be lifted once the sale is completed.Chelsea, led by Thomas Tuchel, the German coach who secured the Champions League title within months of taking over at Stamford Bridge last year, has endured on-field difficulties as it tries to navigate its new reality. The results have been mixed: While Tuchel’s team currently is in third place in the Premier League, it was eliminated from the lucrative Champions League last month. Several players with expiring contracts have announced that they will leave at the end of the season, and until the sale is completed, Tuchel and the club have no way to replace them.Boehly’s group was given a week to close the deal after being chosen last week as the preferred bidder by the New York-based advisory firm Raine Group and Chelsea’s board members.The sale was nearing a conclusion last week when it seemed to be upended, after one of Britain’s richest men, Jim Ratcliffe, announced a bid that mirrored the offer from Boehly’s consortium, after the deadline had passed. On Wednesday, Ratcliffe, who had emphasized his British credentials when making his offer, said Raine had dismissed his bid but vowed to keep fighting to secure the team.Chelsea’s price tag compares with the £1.8 billion valuation ($2.3 billion) for its London rival Arsenal, in 2018, after its American benefactor, the businessman Stan Kroenke, became the sole owner of the club by buying out the 30 percent stake of another now-sanctioned Russian oligarch, Alisher Usmanov, for more than $700 million. Unlike Chelsea, Arsenal has a modern stadium and its finances have been stable.Britain’s Treasury will have to issue a separate license for the sale to go through, with specific clauses that include a requirement that none of the sale proceeds go to Abramovich.The buyers and Raine have discussed the possibility of the proceeds going to victims of the war in Ukraine, an idea that Abramovich raised when he said he would waive an enormous debt owed to him by the club. But it is unclear how such a transfer would work.Todd Boehly, the American who leads the group that has reached an agreement to buy Chelsea, was at the club’s match against Wolves on Saturday.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAbramovich invested nearly $2 billion of his personal funds during his 19-year tenure as owner, during which he covered losses of about $1 million a week as he recruited some of the best players in the world. The strategy was expensive but successful: Chelsea enjoyed the most successful period in its history, becoming a serial contender for domestic and international honors and winning five Premier League and two European Cups.If Boehly’s deal to buy the team goes through with the required approvals from the government and the Premier League, which also has to give its blessing to the sale, his group will have to figure out a way to maintain that successes while paring losses associated with the on-field success and also committing hundreds of millions of dollars to renovating Chelsea’s aging Stamford Bridge stadium, which with a capacity of just over 40,000 is far smaller than the arenas that play host to the Premier League’s biggest teams.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 4Russia’s punishment of Finland. More

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      Russia Is Barred From Women’s Euros and 2023 World Cup

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      Russian soccer teams and clubs were barred from all European competitions, including the Champions League, for the 2022-23 season.Russia was ejected from this summer’s European women’s soccer championship and barred from qualifying for the 2023 Women’s World Cup on Monday, deepening a sporting isolation that resulted from the country’s invasion of Ukraine.UEFA, the governing body for soccer in Europe, announced its decisions Monday. In addition to barring Russia’s team from the two biggest competitions in women’s soccer, the governing body said it had suspended all Russian national teams and clubs from UEFA competitions until further notice.Russian clubs were also barred from all UEFA competitions — including the Champions League, the richest club competition in soccer — for the 2022-23 season.Russia will not participate in this summer’s UEFA Women’s EURO 2022. Portugal, the opponent defeated by Russia in the qualifying play-offs, will now participate in Group C.Additionally, Russian teams will not participate in UEFA club competitions next season.More info: ⬇️— UEFA (@UEFA) May 2, 2022
      The punishments had previously been applied most prominently to Russian men’s teams, tossing Russia out of qualifying for this year’s World Cup in Qatar when it needed only two more wins to earn a place in the field and ejecting a Russian club, Spartak Moscow, from the knockout rounds of the Europa League.Russia’s women had missed two World Cup qualifiers in April as a result of the earlier ban on its teams, but UEFA had postponed a decision on its participation at the women’s Euros, which open in July in England. Now, with the event approaching and many countries on record saying they would not play against a Russian team, it was left with little choice.Portugal will replace Russia at the European Championship, taking its place in a group that includes two of the tournament favorites — the Netherlands and Sweden — as well as Switzerland. Russia had defeated Portugal in a playoff to qualify for the event.Several international sports leagues and organizations have dropped Russia and Russian athletes from competition since the country’s invasion of Ukraine in February, in sports as varied as tennis, soccer, auto racing and track and field. Last week, Russia was stripped of the hosting rights for next year’s world ice hockey championships.Russia has vowed to fight some of the punishment against its teams and athletes at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, the body responsible for adjudicating disputes in sports. (It has nearly a dozen complaints filed with the court already.) And not everyone has agreed with blanket bans on Russian athletes.After Wimbledon, under pressure from the British government, confirmed that it would not allow Russian and Belarusian players to participate in the grass-court tennis tournament this summer, the governing bodies for the men’s and women’s tours both expressed concern about the decision.The ATP, which runs the men’s tour, called it “unfair” and said it had “the potential to set a damaging precedent for the game.”The WTA, which oversees the women’s tour, said: “Individual athletes should not be penalized or prevented from competing due to where they are from or the decisions made by the governments of their countries. Discrimination, and the decision to focus such discrimination against athletes competing on their own as individuals, is neither fair nor justified.”On Sunday, the top men’s players Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal added their voices to the criticism.“It’s not their fault what’s happening in this moment with the war,” Nadal, a 21-time Grand Slam winner, said in Spain, calling some of the affected players “my Russian teammates, my colleagues.”“I’m sorry for them,” Nadal said. “Wimbledon just took their decision. The government didn’t force them to do it.” More

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      in Tennis

      Wimbledon Will Bar Russian and Belarusian Players

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      Wimbledon officials have confirmed that they intend to bar Russian and Belarusian players from playing in this year’s tournament because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Belarus’s support of the war.The ban would make Wimbledon the first Grand Slam tennis event to restrict individual Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing. In a statement Wednesday afternoon, Wimbledon confirmed that other tennis tournaments to be held this year in the United Kingdom plan to take the same approach.“Given the profile of The Championships in the United Kingdom and around the world, it is our responsibility to play our part in the widespread efforts of government, industry, sporting and creative institutions to limit Russia’s global influence through the strongest means possible,” the statement read.“In the circumstances of such unjustified and unprecedented military aggression, it would be unacceptable for the Russian regime to derive any benefits from the involvement of Russian or Belarusian players with The Championships.”Wimbledon, one of the four Grand Slam tournaments, is scheduled to begin in late June. The tournament, in its statement, left open the possibility of revising its position, stating that “if circumstances change materially between now and June, we will consider and respond accordingly.”The decision would exclude a number of highly ranked players. Four Russian men are ranked in the top 30 on the ATP Tour, including No. 2 Daniil Medvedev, who is the reigning U.S. Open men’s singles champion, although he is recovering from a hernia operation. Russia has five women in the top 40 of the WTA Tour rankings, led by No. 15 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus is ranked No. 4 and was a Wimbledon semifinalist last year. Her compatriot Victoria Azarenka, a former No. 1, is ranked No. 18.After the war began in February, professional tennis organizers were quick to bar the Russians and their Belarusian allies from team events like the Davis Cup and the Billie Jean King Cup, both of which were won by Russian teams in 2021. The sport’s seven governing bodies announced that ban collectively on March 1.And the men’s and women’s tour events in Moscow later this season were canceled, as were a number of lower-tier events in Russia and Belarus. The International Tennis Federation also announced the suspension of the Russian Tennis Federation and Belarusian Tennis Federation from I.T.F. membership.But Russian and Belarusian players have been permitted to continue competing on the professional tours as individuals albeit without any national identification. There are no longer flags or countries listed next to their names on scoreboards, in draws or in the published computer rankings.Russia’s Daniil Medvedev during the 2021 Wimbledon tournament. He is currently ranked No. 2 in men’s singles.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut there have been calls for a full ban from several former and current Ukrainian players, including the rising women’s star Marta Kostyuk and the former player Olga Savchuk, the captain of Ukraine’s Billie Jean King Cup team, which competed against the United States in Asheville, N.C., last week.“I think it’s just a matter of time,” Savchuk said in an interview. “It’s not me who’s making the decision, but I think they should also be banned from playing as individuals. It cannot just be a sanction against 90 percent of the Russian people and 10 percent not.”“It has to be even,” Savchuk added. “And I think it’s collective guilt.”But while some other international sports, including track and field and figure skating, have barred individual Russian and Belarusian athletes from some competitions, professional tennis had adopted a more conservative approach.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3A new phase of the war. More

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      Exiled by Russian Bombs, Shakhtar Donetsk Embraces Its Journey

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      It wasn’t the sounds of the bombs, though he did hear those, that brought back the memories for Darijo Srna. It was the air raid sirens.When they blared in Kyiv shortly after 6 a.m. on Feb. 24, Srna froze in terror. His mind flooded with thoughts and recollections of his childhood, of his first experience with war, when the former Yugoslavia broke apart in the 1990s.Since then, soccer has taken Srna, 39, far from his home in Croatia to a distinguished career, the bulk of it with the Ukrainian club Shakhtar Donetsk, where he is currently the director of football, and to games in the Champions League and at two World Cups. But in an instant, the sounds of sirens brought it all back.“I started to panic,” he said. “You have some trauma for all your life, for sure — deep in yourself. That is something you try to forget. But you can never forget these types of things.”Shakhtar Donetsk had run from bombs before. In 2014, the last time Russian forces invaded Ukraine, missiles landed on Shakhtar’s stadium. Within days, the club packed and headed west, beginning a nomadic existence: to a new home in Lviv, in the far west of the country, and then east again, to Kharkiv, before settling in the capital, Kyiv.Darijo Srna, who spent 15 years at Shakhtar as a player, is now a top official at the club.Bradley Secker for The New York TimesNow Shakhtar is on the move again. Last week, after receiving special permission to take military-age men out of the country, its players and coaches landed in Istanbul. With war leading to the suspension of the second half of the Ukrainian season, Shakhtar will soon become a touring team, playing exhibition games — the first was Saturday in Greece — to bring attention to the plight of Ukrainians and to raise money for the war effort.Shakhtar Donetsk had never stopped being a team. Now, it hopes, it will be a symbol, too.“I don’t know which kind of team in the history of football can be compared to us,” Srna said. “No other team has ever felt or lived what we have in these past eight years.”A Team in ExileShakhtar players training in Istanbul last week. They needed government permission to leave Ukraine, where an emergency law requires military age men to stay.Bradley Secker for The New York TimesShakhtar officials had been convinced there would not be a war, even as Russia massed forces and equipment on Ukraine’s border; even as the players began to fret; even as worried family members called them daily at a winter training camp in Turkey with news, warnings, pleas.A Guide to the 2022 World CupThe 32-team tournament kicks off in Qatar on Nov. 21.F.A.Q.: When will the games take place? Who are the favorites? Will Lionel Messi be there? Our primer answers your questions.The Matchups: The group assignments are set. Here’s a breakdown of the draw and a look at how each country qualified.U.S. Returns: Five years after a calamitous night cost the U.S. a World Cup bid, a new generation claimed a berth in the 2022 tournament.The Host: After a decade of scrutiny and criticism, there is a sense that Qatar will at last get the payoff it always expected for hosting the World Cup.So in February, Sergei Palkin, Shakhtar’s chief executive, called a meeting in an effort to assuage the growing concerns.“I said that everything would be OK because the president of Ukraine, everybody, was saying that no problems, war will not come,” Palkin said.The team flew back to Kyiv. But Palkin was wrong. Three days later, Russian troops streamed across the border, and rather than prepare to play the second half of its league season, the team’s management suddenly found itself needing to make altogether different calculations.While many of Shakhtar’s Ukrainian players relocated to Lviv, which hosted the team when it was first forced to leave Donetsk, a group of more than 50 players and staff members took refuge in a hotel owned by the team owner Rinat Akhmetov. From there, timely help and frantic phone calls helped forge a plan to get the club’s foreign players and their families to safety.Srna was a key conduit in those discussions, which also involved players’ unions, Ukrainian and neighboring soccer federations and the sport’s governing body in Europe, UEFA. He said his own experiences — he was also a member of the team the last time it fled to safety, in 2014 — served as a guide.“Unfortunately,” he said ruefully, “this is my third war.”Only after the players were on their way home to South America and elsewhere did Srna embark on a journey of his own: what turned out to be a 37-hour drive to Croatia, where much of his family still lives, to reassure them he was safe. Two family members on his father’s side were killed after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, so his weren’t the only nerves that needed calming.Sergei Palkin had tried to reassure his team that there would be no war. He was wrong.Bradley Secker for The New York TimesAfter touching base, though, Srna quickly set about tackling a new task: how to move the dozens of children based in Shakhtar’s youth academy outside Kyiv out of harm’s way. The effort was professional but also intensely personal: Many of the children were only 12 and 13, about the age Srna had been when he first experienced war.Hajduk Split, Srna’s first professional club, said it would be willing to accommodate the boys if they could get to the city. Dinamo Zagreb, another Croatian team, said it would provide buses if Shakhtar could get the players to Ukraine’s border with Hungary. The players and the rest of Shakhtar’s traveling party spent two days at Dinamo’s stadium, Srna said, where they were fed and evaluated by doctors before moving on to Split.Today, because of the effort, more than 80 children, some of their mothers and a few aging coaches and medical staff members are safely in Croatia, far from the worst horrors of war, training and even playing games again.“I just put myself in their situation,” Srna said of his involvement. “I didn’t want these children to stay and listen all day to bombing and bullets.“What I remember when I was a kid, I remember who gave me chocolate, who gave me a ball, who gave me water. And that was what was most important.”Waving the FlagShakhtar players wore Ukrainian flags onto the field against Olympiakos on Saturday.Yorgos Karahalis/Associated PressLike every other corner of the Ukrainian population, Shakhtar has been touched by the war in more serious ways, too. A coach from the team’s academy died after his hometown was overrun by Russian forces in the first weeks of the war. Two staff members from the team’s merchandising department have taken up arms.Shakhtar’s training site in Kyiv also bears the scars of conflict. Chunks of its training fields have been gouged by shelling, and artillery fire ripped open sheds where the team stored training equipment.The conflict has also brought renewed attention to figures like Akhmetov, Ukraine’s wealthiest man. Like a handful of oligarchs in Russia, he grew immensely rich — sometimes amid questions of dubious means — in the wild and unpredictable aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union. Akhmetov has made a point to be seen as contributing millions of dollars of his fortune to the war effort, and he said in an interview that he remained committed to his country and team. “All our efforts are focused on the only thing that matters — to help Ukraine win this war,” he said.The efforts of Akhmetov and his soccer team are now entwined with those of the Ukrainian government — relationships that have already helped Shakhtar overcome some unique hurdles. Before it could depart for Turkey, for example, the club needed special government exemptions from an emergency law barring military-age men from leaving the country during the war. Those approvals finally arrived on Wednesday afternoon. Now that it is based in Istanbul, its tour will serve several functions.The games, starting with one against Olympiakos in Athens on Saturday, are viewed in part as a diplomatic tool, a chance to personalize Ukraine’s humanitarian crisis, raise money for the country’s military and provide humanitarian aid for its citizens.But the matches will also play an important sporting role. Several Shakhtar Donetsk players are also members of Ukraine’s national team, and the games will help to ensure their fitness ahead of a key qualification playoff in June for the 2022 World Cup. (Shakhtar’s rival, Dynamo Kyiv, is playing a series of exhibition games for the same reasons; both clubs have said they will call up players from other Ukrainian teams to supplement their rosters, in part so Ukraine has the best chance of advancing to the World Cup in the June playoff.)Shakhtar’s games have multiple aims: to raise awareness about the country’s plight and to keep its national team sharp ahead of a World Cup qualifying playoff in June. Yorgos Karahalis/Associated PressThe Shakhtar team that will take part in the coming tour — matches against Polish and Turkish clubs have been arranged, and games against A-list opponents could follow — has been shorn of much of its international talent: Most of those players exercised an option allowing them to temporarily sign with teams outside Ukraine after the outbreak of war. Most will never return. But some, like the Brazilian defender Marlon, have said they will be back, and others are mulling their options.“We are not angry, we are all human beings,” Srna said. “It’s important they are safe and with their family.”The new season in Ukraine is, for now, scheduled to begin in July. With so much damage to the country and war still raging, the timetable appears to be little more than a place holder. When soccer returns, as it eventually will, nothing will be the same.It is not even clear if Donetsk, Shakhtar’s home, will remain a part of Ukraine, a prospect that could make the team’s temporary exile a permanent one. Whatever the case, whatever the conclusion, team officials said Shakhtar would never turn its back on its roots.“They can put any flag they like in Donetsk,” Srna said. “But Shakhtar will always be from Donetsk; it’s something no one and nothing can ever change.”Wherever Shakhtar ends up calling home, whoever it plays in the interim, one idea remains impossible to even contemplate: games against Russian opponents. Palkin said he was confident European soccer officials would ensure that Ukrainian teams would not cross paths with opponents from Russia in future competitions. But he had a simple answer if Shakhtar was ever faced with such a matchup. “We wouldn’t play,” he said.Louiza Vradi/Reuters More

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      in Basket

      Brittney Griner Said to Be ‘OK’ as Russian Court Extends Her Detention

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      Griner, the W.N.B.A. star, has been detained on drug charges in Russia since mid-February and is now expected to remain in custody until at least May.A Russian court extended the detention of the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner by two months on Thursday, and denied an appeal from her legal team, who had hoped to have her transferred to house arrest.Griner, 31, has been held in Russia since mid-February on drug charges that could carry a sentence of up to 10 years if she is convicted. Griner is “OK” and has seen her Russian legal team multiple times a week while she has been in custody, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who asked not to be identified publicly because of the sensitivity of the matter.The Russian Federal Customs Service said on March 5 that its officials had detained an American basketball player, who was later identified as Griner. Customs officials accused Griner of having vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage at the Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow.On Thursday, the Russian news agency Tass reported that Griner’s detention had been extended to May 19 during a hearing. Griner’s legal team in Russia had hoped to have her transferred to house arrest at the hearing, but were not surprised that the appeal of her detention was denied, according to the person with knowledge of the situation.The investigation into the charges is ongoing, and it is typical for a Russian court to add time to the detention until a trial date — if one is necessary — is set, according to the person. Thursday’s hearing did not deal with the merit of the charges, the person said.The W.N.B.A. season begins May 6. Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and a seven-time All Star for the Phoenix Mercury, is one of the game’s most prominent stars.She is being held at a time of increasingly tense relations between the United States and Russia after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last month. U.S. officials have repeatedly accused Russia of detaining and sentencing American citizens for dubious reasons.The continued detention of a high-profile American could even be an effort by Russia to gain leverage in the political and economic standoff with Washington over the invasion, experts say.Tass reported that Griner had not been visited by U.S. consular officials, despite Russia’s willingness to facilitate a meeting. But last week, Representative Colin Allred, Democrat of Texas, told The New York Times that Griner had been denied consular access by Russian officials.“It’s already a violation of international norms and the way these things are handled when they happen to Americans abroad,” Allred said last week.Griner is among the many W.N.B.A. players who compete internationally to supplement their American salaries, and she has played for the Russian team, UMMC Ekaterinburg, for several years.Those close to Griner have said little publicly about the detention since it became widely known on March 5, likely hoping to arrange for her return through quiet diplomacy.On Wednesday, Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, joined an increasing number of politicians and public figures who have shown support for Griner when she tweeted “Free Brittney” with a link to a BBC article about Griner. More