In doing so, they ignored numerous appeals from European politicians to boycott Ukraine’s leadership as punishment for what is viewed in the West as politically motivated persecution of the opposition.
Five members of royalty, five presidents, two parliament speakers, four prime ministers and several members of foreign governments attended the final match of the European Football Championship in Kyiv, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry boasted to point out that “politicizing” the sports is unpopular in modern Europe.
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Leaders of several European Union countries, including Germany, France and the United Kingdom, said earlier they would not attend football matches in Ukraine to protest the imprisonment of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
Brussels has already frozen a political association and free trade agreement with Ukraine as a result of jailing of Tymoshenko and other opposition leaders in Ukraine.
Tymoshenko was sentenced last October to seven years in prison. The court found her guilty of exceeding her authority as prime minister when negotiating the Jan. 19, 2009 gas contract with Russia. The charges are seen in the West as an attempt by Ukrainian leadership to bar her from politics, including prevent her from running in the Oct. 28 parliamentary elections.
Had there been no boycott, Yanukovych could have boasted a richer representation of democratic leaders in the VIP box at Olympic Stadium in Kyiv.
Before the semifinals, the German team’s coach said Chancellor Angela Merkel might have attended the final match in Kyiv if Germany had won.
Merkel has been the harshest among European leaders in criticizing Yanukovych for democratic regression and described Ukraine as “dictatorship” last May during her address to the German Bundestag.
However, the moral dilemma for Merkel of whether to come to Ukraine to support the national team or to boycott Yanukovych by avoiding meetings with him simply vanished when Italy defeated Germany in the semifinals.
Yet Italian and Spanish leaders came for their teams’ final game; so did Spain’s Crown Prince Felipe.
Ukraine’s president was accompanied during the match by his post-Soviet colleagues: Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Also Bronislaw Komorowski, president of co-host Poland, came to the final game.
The biggest outrage among human rights activists was provoked by the arrival of Lukashenko, who faces EU travel sanctions for his repression at home. “Do not watch football with a dictator,” a number of human rights organizations urged before the July 1 championship match.
Lukashenko came to the match with his son Nikolai.
Poland’s Komorowski probably came the closest to Lukashenko in the stadium’s VIP lounge box. Yet, the presidents were not seen shaking hands.
Part of the reason for that was because of the seating in the VIP box. European leaders were in a neighboring part of the VIP box, which prevented them from crossing paths with “Europe’s last dictator,” as Lukashenko is often described. But the Belarus president, entertained by the conversation with his Georgian counterpart, did not seem to be upset about it.
A number of billionaire Ukrainian oligarchs also joined Yanukovych to watch the final game last night, including Rinat Akhmetov, who owns Donetsk Shakhtar football club, Oleksandr Yaroslavsky, who owns Kharkiv Metalist football club, and Dmytro Firtash, a co-owner of gas trader RosUkrEnergo and other valuable assets in Ukraine’s chemical industry.
Russian oligarch Roman Abramovych, who resides in the United Kingdom and who owns London’s Chelsaa football club, was also seen there in the VIP box during the game.
Among local politicians, there were Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, parliament speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, vice speaker and communist Adam Martyniuk and head of the Kyiv city administration Oleksandr Popov.
All Ukraine’s former presidents – Leonid Kravchuk, Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yushchenko – who at different times were political enemies, came to the game and sat next to each other.
Serhiy Kivalov, the infamous Party of Regions lawmaker who chaired Ukraine’s Central Elections Commission during the 2004 rigged presidential election that triggered the Orange Revolution protests, also came and watched the game.
Kyiv Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at onyshkiv@kyivpost.com
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