The ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine first started like the usual few days of confrontation in the West Bank. But as the military action between the two neighbours scaled up, casualty figures have continued to pile up.
Nobody envisaged the level of humanitarian catastrophe the hostility has brought. Human and economic losses are usually the fall out of warf, but this is almost the first time in an open era that sport too became a collateral damage.
As civilian and military death toll keep rising, Premier League club, Chelsea, were hit by a stray bullet all the way from battlefront on Thursday, after its owner Roman Abramovich, one of Vladimir Putin’s henchmen and one of Russia’s oligarch, got all his assets frozen, including the football club, by the United Kingdom, to punish anyone close to the Russian president over his invasion of Ukraine.
Abramovich really got caught in the web of the ongoing war. If one desire to be a successful business tycoon in Russia, you must be ready to be friends with Putin, whom the Western bloc regards as a brute and an incarnate of Joseph Stalin. He must be what water is to you; ‘e no get enemy’ as Fela candidly puts it.
Putin jailed and almost ruined the business empire of former oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who stood up to him for perpetrating himself in power. Khodorkovsky is currently exiled in London.
Not every oligarch alleged to have close ties with Putin has the gut to challenge a man many say is the most powerful man in the world.
Abramovich is said to have close relationship with the Kremlin for decades, which he has denied. And it was very easy for the UK government to target him and other Russian billionaires who have assets on their land.
The Chelsea owner’s steel company, Evraz, is said to be responsible for about 60 percent of materials uses in the production of Russia’s military tanks and other hardware, which are being used in Ukraine.
According to British foreign secretary Liz Truss, the government is after the oligarchs to “ramp up the pressure on the Putin regime and choke off funds to his brutal war machine”.
“This association has included obtaining a financial benefit or other material benefit from Putin and the government of Russia,” the UK government also said.
The implications are grave for Chelsea, and the proposed sale of the club by Abramovich, with his plan to donate the money to the Ukraine Relief Fund, has now been halted.
The UEFA Champions League holders can’t sell new tickets, negotiate new contracts with players or sign new ones.
Reports have said the club will go out of cash in 15 days, and they (Chelsea) are making efforts to beg the government to ease the sanctions.
The era of lush the club enjoyed under their Russian owner may well be over now. If the UK government eventually sanctions a sale, of which they will ensure Abramovich does not benefit a dime from, it would be left to the new owners to uphold his virtues since 2004 when he bought the London side.
