December 19 – World Cup organisers reportedly rejected a personal request from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to deliver an address ahead of Sunday’s final.
Zelensky wanted to deliver a message of peace via video link to fans inside the stadium in Qatar but was turned down by FIFA, according to CNN.
FIFA sought to keep politics out of the World Cup but did nothing to deal with an array of Palestinian flags during the tournament.
Zelensky would apparently have said the following: “Warm greetings from Ukraine to all fans of football, life and peace. I congratulate the whole planet on the World Cup final.”
“This is the dream of so many people when players compete making everyone enjoy peace. Every father would like to take his son to a football match all over the world and every mother would like her son to be back from war.
“Whenever it is, Ukraine strives for peace more than anything else. We offered peace formally to the world, we offered it because there are no champions in war, there can be no draw.
“I announce the initiative to hold a global peace formal summit this winter. The summit to unite all nations of the world around the cause of global peace.
‘Stadiums and stands get empty after the match and after the war cities remain empty. That’s why wars must fail and peace is to become the champion as it is there in Qatar now. The World Cup but not the world war. It is possible. “
Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter that FIFA showed “a lack of understanding of the disaster that [the Russian Federation] is dragging the world into by starting a war in Ukraine.”
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