Russia has entered an ice hockey team from occupied Luhansk in a competition as part of its continued attempts to integrate Ukraine's occupied territories into its own sports system.
Source: chess grandmaster Peter Heine Nielsen on X (Twitter)
This the youth team from Luhansk 🇺🇦 that the Russian🇷🇺 Ice hockey federation has playing in its league:
Details: The Diesel team from occupied Luhansk has been entered in the Interregional Competitions of the Southern and North Caucasus Federal Districts.
All the children listed in the team's roster were born in 2014 and 2015: an entire generation of Ukrainian children have been taken from their homeland.
The competition is held under the auspices of the Russian Ice Hockey Federation, which recently secured the Russian national team's return to international competitions through the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
This is far from the first attempt by Russia to integrate temporarily occupied territories into its own sports system. Earlier this year, CAS ordered the Russian Chess Federation to withdraw from Ukrainian territories under occupation, but the ruling was ignored.
Later, the International Chess Federation temporarily suspended the Russian Chess Federation over its failure to comply with the CAS ruling.
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