In the first week of the war, Sergei Naumov, Leonid Tambiev, Viktor Ignatiev, Grigory Panteleev, Peter Grom and Aldis Abolin had not broken their ties with Russian clubs.
In the second week of the war, Ignatjevs and Groms decided to return to Latvia. Contracts with the Continental Hockey League (KHL) have also been terminated by two referees.
The Secretary General of the Latvian Hockey Federation (LHF) Roberts Pļāvējs explained that politics, especially KHL, has become unnecessarily intrusive. “I wouldn’t want to call it revenge, it would be too loud, but we can still draw some parallels,” said the Mower. As an example, he mentioned the situation with Judge Eduarud Odin, who was not assigned to play.
Odin turned out to be in a peculiar situation, as he arrived in Russia on the third day of the invasion, but later acquitted that he did not know about the start of the war.
Initially, it was rumored that the Latvian Hockey Federation would forbid him to judge domestic competitions, but later, after hearing the judge himself, Odiņš was given the green light.
“Talking to Eduards Odiņš and realizing that he had already made his decision, which has led to a broken contract [ar KHL]it is clear that this issue must be looked at from a different perspective, “the Secretary – General of the LHF explained that the ban had been lifted.
Goalkeeper coach Sergei Naumov continues to work for the Russian Army Club CSKA. At the very beginning of the war, the slogan “Putin is our president!” However, the hockey federation is not in a hurry with categorical decisions on whether Naumov and other specialists who have remained in Russia will be able to work for the Latvian national team as well. Naumov has not legally violated Latvian legislation either.
“In the current situation, it is difficult for me personally to find a logical reason why people would work here in Latvian hockey and at the same time continue to work in Russia. Under the current conditions, but I would not want to put a bold stamp on anyone,” said
The Ministry of Education and Science is ready to put a bold stamp on it.
“Athletes and sports staff will be banned from competing in the Russian Federation or the Republic of Belarus,” said Edgar Sever, director of the sports department at the Ministry of Education and Science.
Athletes and coaches who do not comply with this law will not be able to represent the Latvian national team and receive state and local government budget funds.
Athletes, coaches and federations that will object to it will be able to defend their rights in the Constitutional Court. The ban will take effect from the moment the law is passed, so hockey professionals who have remained in Russia and Belarus for at least the next couple of weeks may not worry about this prospect.
It is significant that Ignatjevs and Panteļejevs once received Latvian citizenship for special merits for the benefit of the state. In the case of Panteleev, contact with him was broken even by the LHF.
Citizenship may be revoked if it has been acquired illegally, if a person has participated in hostilities in the territory of another state without the state’s permission, or if the person calls for the violent overthrow of state power. None of this is the case of Panteleev. His merits are also undeniable in the ranks of the Latvian national team, but the fact itself and the political context lead to the question whether citizenship has not been given too easy a hand for athletes in general.
The Saeima decides on the granting of citizenship, and in recent years it has been granted to several athletes with dubious grounds.
In his submission to the Saeima, Argentine Christian Torres was proud to have learned Russian in Latvia for more than a decade, but the leadership of the Latvian national team at the time wrote in letters of recommendation that granting Tores citizenship would significantly increase the Latvian national team’s qualifying for the 2018 World Cup finals. In reality, Latvia has never won the Faroe Islands, which are home to 53,000 people.
Ruslans Nakončnijs, a modern five-wrestling athlete, received Latvian Citizenship in 2015, and three years later another representative of this sport – Oleksandrs Pinčuks. Art gymnast Jelizavets Polstjanaja was at the Latvian passport in 2018.
Severs pointed out that no one has asked the MES whether or not someone should be granted citizenship.
“The ministry has never been consulted by a parliamentary committee or a sports organization,” he explained.
If it is planned to make the Sports Law more patriotic, then it is probably the most appropriate time to review the naturalization procedure for athletes. At present, there is no middle ground in the legislation between the full naturalization process and the acquisition of citizenship for special merits in favor of Latvia, which no athlete actually has at the time of granting citizenship.
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