Serbian basketball club Red Star Belgrade, after asking its players to refuse to hold a banner of support for Ukraine before their Euroleague match on Sunday in Kaunas (Lithuania), lambasted the “politicization of the gesture of the players». «In our official communications with the Euroleague and the management of the Zalgiris (Kaunas) club, we made it clear several days before the match that we would not allow politicization and that we would not carry a banner with the flag of any country whatever“, explained the club in a press release.
The Belgrade team, host city of the Final Four of the queen of European competitions from May 19 to 21, underlined that as a representative of their country, they had to “follow the official positionof Serbia on the war in Ukraine, a position which isclaire” according to her. Serbia has condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine before the United Nations but refuses to impose sanctions on Moscow.
The Red Star further said it wants tocut short any speculation and politicization of the gesture of the players“. But the American interior of the club, Aaron White, for his part marked his opposition to the war. “As a team, we were told not to touch the flag. I want to make it clear that I do not support war and I want peace in the world“wrote the player on his Twitter account.
Before the match, only the Zalgiris Kaunas players and the three referees held the banner in the blue and yellow colors of Ukraine, which read: “Stop War(Stop the war, Editor’s note) in capital letters. The Red Star asked the Euroleague to “to react urgently, to open a disciplinary procedure and to sanction this violation of the basic principles and rules of the Euroleague“, continues the press release. “Should the Red Star in turn require participants in matches in Belgrade to carry a banner with the inscription ”Kosovo is Serbian”?asked the club, referring to the former Serbian province with an Albanian majority which unilaterally declared its independence in 2008.