Ostensibly, it was just a badge on a shirt. Or more specifically, a faint pattern stitched around a badge on a shirt. To the untrained eye, it was simply an outline map of Ukraine woven into the country’s football strip ahead of this summer’s Euro 2020 tournament, delayed from last year by the pandemic. But for anyone familiar with the intricacies of post-Soviet geopolitics, it was a piece of thread with connotations. For the map of Ukraine included the peninsula of Crimea, which remains under Russian control after being annexed in 2014. Emblazoned inside the collar were the words “Glory to the heroes!”, a nationalist slogan that has gained currency in Ukraine since the popular uprising that ousted the then president Viktor Yanukovych in 2013-14.
Lest there be any doubt about the metatext, the head of the Ukrainian football association, Andrii Pavelko, declared that the map would “give strength to the players because they will fight for all Ukraine… from Sevastopol and Simferopol to Kiev”. Sevastopol and Simferopol are both in Crimea, and naturally the launch of the shirt was met with an equally provocative response from a Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, who likened it to a Nazi rallying cry. Deploying the sort of legalistic gymnastics in which it is well versed, Uefa approved the use of the map, but banned the slogan on the grounds that it was a “clearly political” statement.
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