Gazprom, a company strongly linked to Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, enjoys significant visibility in this season’s Champions League, even though it ended UEFA’s sponsorship deal with the energy company shortly after the Russian invasion began in February 2022.
Manchester City, the reigning European champions, hosted Red Star Belgrade, known as Red Star Belgrade in the English-speaking world, on Tuesday. The Serbian club has worn the Gazprom logo on its shirts since 2010 and proudly maintains close relations with the Russian state. -Owned company.
“(It’s) a branch of the Russian state,” Polina Ivanova, the Financial Times’ correspondent for Russia, Ukraine and Central Asia, told Score about Gazprom. “It’s completely controlled through the Kremlin. “
When I asked UEFA to comment on Gazprom’s presence in its main club competition, the governing body replied: “UEFA has to end its own partnership with Gazprom. Clubs remain guilty of their personal contractual agreements with their sponsors. “
His position appears to be at odds with the official UEFA Champions League regulations. The first access to Article 57 reads: “From the playoffs, only sponsors of approved and used jerseys will appear on the playing apparatus. “
UEFA responded to my request for an explanation as to whether European football directors approved the appearance of Gazprom on Red Star shirts.
Gazprom’s relations with Western countries were incredibly lucrative when Russia provided the European Union with about 40% of its fuel before Vladimir Putin’s troops crossed the borders.
But together with her Financial Times colleagues Christopher Miller and Max Seddon, Ivanova exposed really extensive evidence that Gazprom is backing Russia on the front line. Gazprom started battalions of educational volunteers in August 2022 at mandatory meetings of some of its security groups across Russia, according to the June Report. Workers who signed up were promised very extensive monetary benefits and equipment provided through the company, as well as the assurance that they would return to work after their military service.
“I saw photographs of Gazprom security agents affiliated with an armed militia,” Ivanova said of one facet of her in-depth investigation. “Or armed men on the front line, fully armed, equipped with all weapons, wearing camouflage uniforms, any status in an educational flat or already in Ukraine, and holding a banner that affiliated them with Gazprom, this personal military company. “
Before dying in a plane crash in August – some nine weeks after leading and then aborting the mutiny of the Wagner mercenary organization opposed to the Russian armed forces – he controlled the call of Gazprom’s Potok defense force in a speech about the small and poorly equipped battalions and the motivations of their sponsors for them on the front line.
“People who have money think creating a (battalion) is elegant right now,” he complained in April, according to the Financial Times report. “They have to show the Kremlin how amazing they are at creating their own (units). “
Gazprom is also directly linked to what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described in July as Russia’s “fuel blackmail” to Europe, with pipeline materials falling to 20% of their previous level, and completely cut off. When Gazprom shuts down the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which carries fuel from Russia’s Siberian province to northern Germany, due to an obvious oil leak in September 2022, The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour said Putin was “testing Europe’s genuine will to see the lamps go out” by protecting Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Gazprom is more than vaguely linked to the war; Militias and militarization drive an unwavering commitment to subject Ukraine to Russian rule.
“It’s hard to believe that one company has done 180 more things: from UEFA sponsorship to sponsoring a defense force to the war in Ukraine,” Ivanova said.
Gazprom’s presence remains highly visible in European football, even though UEFA ended its nearly decade-long partnership with the company shortly after the war began. The sponsorship deal, which covered the Champions League and national team competitions, valued €40 million. or more to the guiding framework of European football each season.
Gazprom also lost advertising contracts. FC Schalke, a club from Gelsenkirchen, Germany’s classic advertising hub, has pulled Gazprom from its sponsor after 15 years of partnership.
But relations between Red Star and Gazprom appeared to be strengthening as the death toll rose in Ukraine and Russia. Three months after the conflict, the club published a letter sent through Gazprom congratulating Red Star on winning the Serbian Super League. The message posted on the online page describes Gazprom as “long-time friends and sponsors. “
A week later, Zvezdan Terzic, Red Star’s chief operating officer, confirmed that the club had signed a new, advanced sponsorship deal with Gazprom for two years and 10 million euros. The team then played a friendly against the company’s local club. Zenit St. Petersburg, in the city of Sochi, in southern Russia, in July 2022.
Gazprom appeared on Red Star’s shirts in the 2022-23 edition of UEFA’s secondary continental competition, the Europa League. The Serbian champions then continued their efforts in the Europa League with two more matches against Zenit in November 2022 and back two months ago. The rite that precedes the first friendly match featured the players carrying a banner with the flags of the two countries intertwined and the message “Together!”in Russian and Serbian Cyrillic.
This season, despite UEFA’s cancellation of Gazprom’s sponsorship of the Champions League, the state-owned company will publish Red Star’s matches against Manchester City, champions of Pep Guardiola’s trophy series, RB Leipzig, back-to-back German Cup champions, and Young Boys. who won five victories. of the last six Swiss Championship titles.
Together, Red Star and Gazprom announce a message of unity between Serbia and Russia as Ukraine fights for its existence. And together, Red Star and Gazprom stress that all the money, wherever it comes from, goes to the most sensible aspects of European football.