Sports in the larger scope of world events

Not trying to have a political discussion, but passing along a sports story with greater implications. I know we have forum members living in Europe.

Roman Abramovich giving up day-to-day control over Chelsea right before invasion says a lot as well.

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Abramovich is selling Chelsea and not seeking repayment of $1.5 billion of loans he has made to the club.

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I don’t know what Abromavichs connections are but he made a crap ton of money through oil in Russia. However, Ukrainian officials attempted to have him intervene in peace talks, I don’t know the connections to Ukraine, anyone know?

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Juat read the news about Griner. Knew a lot of WNBA players were scrambling to get out of Russia. Scary situation for her.

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It was CBD oil,not hash but unfortunately because of the situation im afraid for her because Putin is a nut

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Or at least that’s what i heard on the news about the oil but i can’t see no Americans doing anything like that right now

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I don’t think he is connected to Ukraine, I think it was that he is connected to Putin but wants to get the heat off him in the West a little bit, so he made himself available to the Ukrainians in the peace talks.

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Ahh, makes way more sense, thanks.

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They make bank over there. Very difficult situation. Hope they get out safely. Happy AG had his fam out of there a couple years ago.

Isabelle Khurshudyan (former uva beat writer) has been reporting for WaPo all over Ukraine, including a very sad one about her great aunt who helped raise her, from Odessa.

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Almost-Hoo Svi Mykhailiuk is from Ukraine

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Absolutely oddly this may be what’s needed to push the wnba to pay and treat their players accordingly. Griner is basically a political hostage at this point. Being American Black and LGBTQ are all very dangerous.

This all hits home for our house FIL escaped Ukraine as a child and came to US. Both my kids have Ukrainian middle names as homage.

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Same here, my great grandmother left Ukraine at 14 through Poland and eventually came through Ellis Island. Crazy and sad how history keeps repeating itself.

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The league needs to make more money or publicly shame the NBA more in order to pay players more. They aren’t not paying the players just to be dicks.

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Yes but that is absolutely over simplifying an issue. There are owners with the means and resources accordingly. Players are played by teams not the league. The Liberty just got fined $500k for using charter flights instead of forcing their players to fly commercial.

Obviously everything is more complicated (as with any issue) but at the end of the day most owners are losing money on the WNBA. Until that issue gets solved paying the players enough so that they don’t feel playing overseas is necessary relies on the generosity and charity of the owners.