By PATRICK REEVELL
Vladimir Putin - then Russia's prime minister - on the end of press conference after Russia won the 2018 World Cup bid
Amid Ukraine Crisis, Fear of Vladimir Putin Extends to Soccer
MOSCOW — A leaked recording of a meeting of Russia’s top soccer executives appears to show them panicked at the possibility that their clubs might be ejected from major European competitions and Russia might be stripped of the 2018 World Cup as they discuss a vote to admit three clubs from Crimea into the Russian league.
In the recording, the executives, who control Russia’s top clubs, recoil from taking a step that might invite more Western sanctions or displease Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. On the tape, they resolve to seek guidance from Putin, in apparent violation of strict FIFA rules that national soccer associations be free from political influence.
An abridged transcript of the recording was published Monday by the Russian investigative magazine Novaya Gazeta. The recording, which has not been released, could not be independently verified by The New York Times. But one of the participants, in an interview with a Moscow radio station, appeared to confirm that the meeting had taken place. Telephone calls to the participants on Tuesday went unanswered.
The recording is remarkable for the number of wealthy men exhibiting fear at angering the Kremlin, and also as a rare insight into the absolute authority Putin wields in Russia and the psychological effect of Western sanctions on the country’s establishment. Among the participants are some of Russia’s richest men, including Suleyman Kerimov, ranked as the 72nd-richest man in the world, as well as heads of the country’s leading soccer clubs, Zenit St. Petersburg and CSKA Moscow. Vladimir Yakunin, the head of Russia’s state railways and a close friend of Putin’s, was also present.
Russian Railways CEO Vladimir Yakunin, close friend of Vladimir Putin
The executives had been summoned by Russia’s soccer association on July 31 to vote on whether to incorporate three clubs from Crimea into the Russian national leagues, after the annexation of the peninsula, until then a part of Ukraine, by Russia in March. Last week, Russia’s sports minister announced the clubs — TSK Simferopol, SKChF Sevastopol and Zhemchuzhina Yalta — would join the country’s bottom league, prompting the Ukrainian federation to complain that its clubs were being stolen. All three clubs played their opening matches in the Russian Cup on Tuesday.
In the recording, most of the men at the meeting are clearly alarmed that they should be making the decision, believing it would bring sanctions. The executives are in an uncomfortable position, caught between the threat of Western sanctions if they follow the Kremlin line and their fear of disobeying Putin.
“We’re in checkmate,” Sergei Stepashin, a former security minister and a member of the Russian association’s executive committee, says in the recording.
Sergei Stepashin, a former security minister
Evgeny Giner, the president of CSKA Moscow, complained that by voting the executives were being forced to bear the consequences for a decision in which they had no say.
“You see, he has nothing to lose,” Giner says, referring to Nikolai Tolstykh, the head of the soccer association, whose voice is also said to be on the tape. “But I have a club to support. And tomorrow they’ll pull us from 2018. Why? Because a few wise people here, in the guise of presidents, ask us to put a tick for every ‘for’ or ‘against.’ And voilà, sanctions.”
Evgeni Giner. President of the PFC CSKA Moscow
The United States and the European Union have imposed multiple rounds of sanctions on Russia for what they contend is its failure to help defuse the crisis in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian rebels continue to battle Ukrainian government troops. Initial rounds of sanctions were aimed mainly at individuals close to Putin, including Yakunin, the railway chief, who in the recording berates his colleagues for not being patriots. Western sanctions have since widened to include major Russian financial institutions.
“They will impose them whatever you do,” Yakunin said, according to the transcript. “If you crawl before them on your bellies, they will. Do you understand? So either you get out of this country or behave as its citizens.”
In the transcript, the executives discuss ways to avoid voting on the Crimean question, and ponder circuitously whether the sports minister’s statement on the Crimean clubs constituted an order from the Kremlin. Despite the executives’ obvious reluctance to sacrifice their business interests for the sake of Crimean soccer, the power of Putin’s word, even among billionaires, is evident.
Sergei Galitskii, the billionaire and the chief executive of the Russian club Krasnodar.
“If there’s a direct order, then there’s no questions,” says Sergei Galitskii, the billionaire owner of a chain of grocery stores and the chief executive of the Russian club Krasnodar.
When Tolstykh suggests that the question had been resolved by the sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, one of the executives says, “The department ministers don’t answer for anything!”
One thing that does not appear to have been under consideration is disobeying Putin. Alexander Dyukov, the president of Zenit St. Petersburg, one of Russia’s most successful clubs, readily offered to give up his team’s lucrative place in the Champions League.
Alexander Dyukov, the president of Zenit St. Petersburg
“We can probably survive without Europe, but if we’re talking about the World Cup, that’s a political question,” Dyukov says in the recording.
The executives seem particularly worried about taking any action that could cost Russia its role as host of the 2018 World Cup. Britain’s deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, has suggested that Russia be stripped of the competition as part of the sanctions package.
“The World Cup will go to England,” Giner said at the meeting. “And then it won’t be Nikolai Sanych that Vladimir Vladimirovich goes looking for,” he says, referring to Tolstykh and Putin by their given names. “It’ll be those sitting here.”
The transcript offered a rare look at how the Kremlin manages supposedly independent public bodies, delivering unquestionable orders from the top through high-level aides. The executives seem to flounder as they struggle to divine what their political bosses would want them to do.
“At the moment there’s a tricky political game going on,” Galitskii says. “Might we suggest that the first person of our state doesn’t need this right now? If we don’t ask him, and do this, maybe he won’t thank us for it.”
The men eventually give up their attempts to anticipate Putin’s reaction and decide to request a firm directive from the top, settling with relief upon the idea to seek a “political consultation,” as Galitskii calls it.
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