Lithuanian basketball club decides to cancel travel to Russia to show their support to Ukraine

By Selcuk Bugra Gokalp

ANKARA (AA) - Zalgiris Kaunas will not travel to Russia for their next Turkish Airlines EuroLeague games to protest the Russian attack against Ukraine, the Lithuanian basketball club said on Thursday.

The team from Kaunas was due to play away against CSKA Moscow at Megasport Arena on March 25 and Zenit St. Petersburg at Sibur Arena on April 8.

After the game against Zenit, which has been scheduled to be a Round 34 game, Zalgiris will conclude the regular season.

"While the league will address the actualities in a meeting tomorrow afternoon, we have decided that this reaction is not swift enough and have taken the decision now not to travel to Russia where we were supposed to play two regular season games. We will be talking to teams from Western European clubs and will suggest a common decision not only to not play games in Russia but to also boycott any games against Russian teams," Zalgiris director Paulius Motiejunas said.

Separately, EuroLeague announced that Bayern Munich vs CSKA Moscow, Bitci Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz vs UNICS Kazan games on Feb. 24 and Zenit St Petersburg vs Barcelona game on Feb. 25 were suspended as a "precautionary measure" due to unforeseen circumstances.

- Donbas crisis and Russia's military intervention

Ukraine's February 2014 "Maidan revolution" led to President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing the country and a pro-Western government coming to power. Russia then illegally annexed Crimea, and separatists declared "independence" in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Donbas, eastern Ukraine, both of which have large ethnic Russian populations. Clashes took place between Russian-backed separatist forces and the Ukrainian army. The 2014 and 2015 Minsk agreements, signed in Moscow with the intervention of Western powers, tried to stop the conflict, but cease-fire violations continued and as of this February, some 14,000 people had lost their lives in the conflict.

Late last year, Russia made headlines with the deployments of tens of thousands of its troops on the border with Ukraine. The US said Russia was preparing for an invasion, but Moscow denied it. Despite the threat of Western sanctions, Moscow recognized the separatist governments in Donbas and on Feb. 24, it launched a military operation into Ukrainian territory.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the operation aims to protect people "subjected to genocide" by Kyiv and "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine. He called on the Ukrainian army to lay down its arms.