The Russian Ministry of Sports plans to create a football league for the occupied regions of Ukraine, as well as for South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and hold championships. This was announced by the Deputy Minister of Sports Odes Baysultanov. In particular, teams from LDNR, Crimea, Zaporozhye and Kherson will play. According to him, the organization will not belong to the structures of the Russian Football Union. It is planned to create it on the basis of the Crimean Football Union.
“By analogy with existing competitions, it is planned to create a championship with a tour system not only in Crimea, but also in friendly republics,” Baysultanov told Russia Today. – We are talking about a separate structure, which will be created at the initiative of the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation. It will not apply to the structures of the RFU, which is a member of FIFA and UEFA."
Previously, Crimean football teams were denied entry into the RFU. The acting president of the Russian Premier League (RPL), Alexander Alaev, said he did not see opportunities to include teams from the peninsula in the squad due to the RFU's membership in FIFA and UEFA.
In 2017, Crimeans were also denied tickets to the FIFA World Cup, which was later held in Russia. The Crimeans also had problems with buying tickets for the Confederations Cup, which was held in the summer of 2016.
Russia itself, too, apparently, needs to focus more on participation in the championships “for its own”, given the isolation in which Russian sports found themselves, first after the doping scandal, and then after the invasion of Ukraine. In particular, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Chernyshenko suggested "competing with good neighbors: BRICS, SCO."
BRICS is a group of five countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is an international organization founded by the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.