The Ukrainian T-shirt stunt did not touch Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin was not affected by Ukraine's decision to place maps of the country with Russian Crimea on the uniform of its football team.
He said this in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“There is no novelty here. The position of the Ukrainian authorities regarding Crimea is well known to us. They neglect the will of the people, the Crimeans, which does not really fit with the understanding of democracy. The people voted in the referendum, but the Ukrainian authorities do not recognize this. This is their position, I know it well,” Putin said.
The T-shirts of Ukrainian athletes will bear the inscription “Glory to Ukraine!” and “Glory to the Heroes!”, as well as the outline of Ukraine with Crimea included. UEFA said the kit was approved “in accordance with applicable equipment regulations.”
A number of Russian politicians called the new football uniform of Ukraine a political provocation. And the leader of the LDPR, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, proposed using a map of the Russian Empire in Russian sports uniforms, which completely included the entire modern territory of Ukraine.
“Before 1917, these were just ordinary Russian provinces: Chernigov, Poltava, Kharkov, Kiev, Volyn, Podolsk. Even the word “Ukraine” was not used, and Ukrainian – that is, a mixture of Russian and Polish – was spoken only in remote Western villages. At the same time, we can choose the imperial anthem “God Save the Tsar!” as the music to which the national team enters. This will be a good reminder of which lands actually belong to whom, and who is only a temporary resident on them,” Zhirinovsky wrote in his Telegram channel.
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