By Rigas Dardalis / dardalis@eurohoops.net
There haven’t been many recent occasions in which politics “invaded” basketball. One of these took place recently during the U16 Europeans championship in Kiev. But very few took notice. During the game between Ukraine and Russia on the 17th of August, a group of young Ukrainians, went from the stands inside the court, taking their shirts off and wearing hoods. Everybody was surprised by this peaceful protest, except certain members of the security who “caught” two other youngsters and forced them out of the arena, as you can see in the video.
The reason of this protest, had to do with the decision of the Russian government to stop the selling of the famous Ukrainian chocolate brand “Roshen”. Russia’s health inspector accused “Roshen” of “systemic violations” and also said its sweets contained benzopyrene, a carcinogenic substance.
The company dismissed the allegations, but this week reported that it started lay offs of hundreds of workers at its factories across Ukraine, because of shipment declines to a major market, like the Russian.
It must be noted that problems were created with other companies, like steel company “Metinvest”, or beer brewer “Obolon”.
According to political analysts who talked to “Kiev Post” newspaper, “This is a new round of Russia’s usual trade war tactics, which it launched against Ukraine, hoping to pressure Ukraine into entering the Customs Union”.
All these, made the young Ukrainians consider the game between Ukraine and Russian as the perfect opportunity to express their protest. But their “invasion” was downplayed. First of all cause during the live TV coverage of the game, commercials “interrupted” the flow of the coverage and then Ukrainian media paid little attention to it.