Footballers placed on Ukraine’s state-linked ‘kill list’

Players from Russian clubs CSKA and Zenit have been accused of “war propaganda” by the notorious Mirotvorets database

Directors and players at two of Russia’s top football clubs have been added to the notorious Kiev-backed Mirotvorets (Peacemaker) database, according to its website.

Players from Moscow’s CSKA and St. Petersburg’s Zenit took to the pitch accompanied by children of soldiers who have fought in Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, before a Russian Premier League match on September 14.

The general directors of both CSKA and Zenit – Roman Babaev and Alexander Medvedev – were placed on the list on Wednesday for “war propaganda,” and their profile pages also list the 22 players that took part in the pre-match event.

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The coaches, CSKA’s Nikolic Marko – who is a Serbian national – and Zenit’s Sergey Semak, who was born in Ukraine, were added to Mirotvorets last week in connection with the same game.

Among the accusations against them are “public support for Russian aggression” and “an attempt on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.” 

Although the Mirotvorets center behind the database describes itself as an “independent non-governmental organization,” the website emerged in 2014 at the initiative of Anton Gerashchenko, a former adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister. Until 2016, the ministry, along with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and other law enforcement bodies were among its partners.

Mirotvorets claims that it acts in strict accordance with the laws of Ukraine and international legal norms. However, its front page is rife with calls to kill Russians, and displays graphic images of dead soldiers said to be Russian.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova previously described the Mirotvorets site as “extremist,” and effectively a hit-list of those Kiev wants to “eliminate.” 

The database was dubbed “Kiev’s kill list” after several people were allegedly assassinated by Ukrainian intelligence after their information was posted on the website. Some of them are listed as “liquidated,” including journalist Darya Dugina, who was killed in a car bombing in Moscow in August 2022.

The CSKA players listed on Mirotvorets include two Brazilian and two Serbian nationals. Among the foreign Zenit footballers are four Brazilians, two Colombian nationals, one Argentine and one Serb.

The member of the Sports Committee in the Russian State Duma, Dmitry Svishchev, has described the inclusion of the Zenit and CSKA players, coaches and directors as a “stupid and cynical act” against children and sports.

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In an interview with the Sport-Express newspaper on Wednesday, the lawmaker argued that Mirotvorets acted “out of spite and helplessness,” because it “has long outlived itself and is of no interest to anyone.”