Abramovich to sell Chelsea and ‘donate proceeds to war victims’
Billionaire Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich says he will sell Chelsea FC, promising to donate the net proceeds to a charitable foundation for the benefit of “all victims of the war in Ukraine”.
“This includes providing critical funds towards the urgent and immediate needs of victims, as well as supporting the long-term work of recovery,” he said in a statement.
Abramovich, who has denied close financial links to Russian President Vladimir Putin or the Kremlin but has come under increasing scrutiny in recent days, says the sale will not be fast-tracked.
He says he will not be asking for the loans of £1.5bn he has made to the club to be repaid.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer called today for the 55-year-old to face sanctions, saying he is a “person of interest to the Home Office because of his links to the Russian state”.
Germany has been laying on free train travel (to Germany) from Poland and other countries for 3 or 4 days now (might be why refugees are heading to CZ)
spring 91 is right before things went bad. august 91 was the putsch. three people died at protests. two years later tanks fired on the parliament building and hundreds of people died around or at the barricades. i actually remembered it is as a little over a thousand because clashes were next to residential buildings and happening over time, but that was probably wrong. i’m not sure what newspaper i got it from 30 years ago, and i was a kid.
however, for a week or so it was quite enough that tourists were taking pictures of themselves next to barricades. i remember thinking excitedly that we were finally living in interesting times that you only read about. it was a bit like jan 6 actually, in that they tried to depose yeltsin.
But the funny thing is, by breaking out the most pro Russian parts of the country they turned it into a western facing country. if all of those separatists in crimea were still voting in the elections it is a thin margin between zelensky and a pro Russian strongman. So If we are playing realpolitik in that way Putin basically ensured Ukraine would never become a Belarusian style country with the annexation
Vermont and New Hampshire have stopped selling Russian liquor at their state run liquor stores.
Didn’t realize until today that neither Smirnoff nor Stolichnaya are Russian. Stoli is distilled in Latvia, and Smirnoff is distilled in Illinois of all places. Neither of those are affected by this ban.
Yep my parents both preferred communism. One was a middle class Krakowite and the other a working class rural person (more surprising that he preferred communism).
Maybe. I assume Russia is going to take the bits of Ukraine it wants to keep and withdraw the army to those bits after a few weeks or months after they encircle and capture or destroy as many Ukrainian army units as they can. Maybe depose the current government and install a pro-Russian strongman? A general who surrenders a big chunk of the army and then takes power? I don’t know. I can’t see them occupying and trying to annex all of eastern Ukraine though. So the sentiment of the remaining bits of Ukraine would be very pro-western, I agree. But the Russians are probably going to say something like any move to the West or substantial rearmament will trigger another invasion. Would pro-West rump Ukraine stand up to that threat and engage with the West anyway? Who knows.
Kasparov has been dead right about Putin from the beginning. He thinks if Putin is allowed to take Ukraine unscathed, the next attack will be on a NATO country, but on Putin’s terms.
