European Union officials have discussed banning footballers from participating in the 2018 World Cup in Russia, as part of a wider package of sanctions designed to curb the behaviour of President Putin and Moscow’s military involvement in Ukraine.
The measure is part of a likely widening of sanctions against Moscow if the violence in eastern Ukraine, blamed on Russian military incursions and its supplies of arms to separatists, continues.
The budget for the tournament is expected to be £12 billion. There will be 12 arenas spread over 11 Russian host cities: Moscow, Kaliningrad, St Petersburg, Volgograd, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Saransk, Rostov-on-Don, Sochi and Yekaterinburg.
The threat to boycott the World Cup underscores the mutual hostility and mistrust between Russia and the West in the run-up to the Nato summit in Wales tomorrow, with relations more tense now than at any time since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Moscow yesterday denounced the European Commission for leaking an apparent boast by President Putin that Russian forces could seize Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, in two weeks if he wanted to. He is thought to have made the comment during a telephone call with José Manuel Barroso, the commission president. The Kremlin said the remark had been taken out of context.
Advertisement
As pro-Russian rebels continued to advance in east Ukraine, and Kiev claimed that Russian troops had appeared in cities across the region, the EU and Nato prepared to hit back diplomatically.
As well as a World Cup boycott, fresh sanctions may include a ban on all Russian state-owned companies raising finance in the EU, and freezing Russian athletes, artists and businessmen out of international sporting, cultural and economic events.
President Gauck of Germany said yesterday that Russia had “effectively severed its partnership” with Europe. Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, said: “Russia has chosen the role of pariah, rather than partner.”
Taavi Roivas, the Estonian prime minister, appealed to Nato to expand into a “clear and visible presence in eastern Europe” to deter Russian aggression beyond Ukraine.
Yesterday the government said that 20 British troops would take part in a training exercise in Ukraine this month. Rapid Trident takes place each year, but because of the Ukraine crisis, Britain had refrained from confirming whether it would send anyone.
Advertisement
In Moscow, there is unease at Nato’s expected decision this week to bolster defences for its eastern European member states, as well as a new rapid-reaction force of several thousand troops deployable within 48 hours in response to the Ukraine crisis.
Mikhail Popov, deputy secretary of the National Security Council, told the RIA news agency that “the military infrastructure of Nato member states is getting closer to [Russian] borders, including via enlargement”.
Nato had confirmed that it was one of the main “external threats” to Russia, he said; an understanding that would be reflected in this year’s revision of Moscow’s military security doctrine.
Alexander Golts, an independent defence analyst in Moscow, said that updating the doctrine was a bureaucratic exercise that offered little insight into the Kremlin’s true strategic priorities. “Mr Putin is very dedicated to secrecy, and the doctrine is a public document,” he said.
President Putin said earlier this year that the possibility of Nato expansion into Ukraine was one of Russia’s motivations for annexing Crimea in March, despite an international outcry.
Advertisement
Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine’s prime minister, said last week that Kiev would scrap the country’s formal non-aligned status and press to join Nato.
Yesterday Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin aide, appeared to confirm that President Putin had made the remark about seizing Kiev. “Whether these words were said or not, in my viewpoint, the quote is taken out of context, and it had an absolutely different meaning,” he said.
President Poroshenko of Ukraine has accused Russia of a direct military intervention that has led to a radical change in the battlefield balance of power in east Ukraine. Pro-Russian rebels there claimed yesterday to have surrounded Mariupol, a port and leading industrial centre on the Sea of Azov, but the city itself remained peaceful.
Colonel Andriy Lysenko, a Ukrainian military spokesman, said Russian forces had been spotted in Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as several other cities throughout the east. His claim could not be independently verified. Information provided by the Ukrainian military and the rebels has often proved inaccurate.
Ukraine may need another $19 billion (£11.5 billion) from donors if the war continues into next year, the International Monetary Fund said. The present $17 billion bailout — part of a $27 billion international rescue package for the country’s tottering economy — will not meet its expected targets, because of the cost of the war and an intensified gas dispute with Russia, the IMF added.
Advertisement
The regions of Donetsk and Luhansk accounted for 23 per cent of Ukraine’s industrial production and 14.5 per cent of its retail trade in the first quarter of the year before the war began.