Ukraine Hockey says members and families received threats from Russians during IIHF tournament

The Ice Hockey Federation of Ukraine (FHU) has released a statement condemning the actions of some Russian players at the IIHF's Continental Cup. The tournament is for teams who aren't represented in the European Hockey League. While Russia is barred from having teams represent the country at IIHF tournaments, Russian players are not banned from playing for other teams.

According to the FHU, there were two Ukrainians playing for a team based in Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday, while as many as 12 Russians were playing for a team from Istanbul, Turkey. The FHU claims the Russians started acting very aggressively towards the Ukrainian players and coach (also Ukrainian) early in the third period, with the aggression escalating from there.

"At first, the [Russians] escalated the atmosphere at the beginning of the third period, provoking the first fight, and then arranged a uniform outrage, when they began to be rude, threaten the families of the players and did not filter vulgar words against the Ukrainians," said the release.

One of the Russian players, Alexey Kaygorodov, was booted from the game in the third for hitting a Ukrainian player from behind. That player, Stanislav Didkovsky, just happens to be the son of the coach of Barcelona's team.

"I jumped on the ice to the victim and expressed my indignation to the offender, saying, 'what are you doing?' And in response I heard a stream of profanity and threats to the life of my family," said Danylo Didkovsky.

Artem Ponomarenko, the other Ukrainian playing for Barcelona, said he heard one of the Russians say "I will kill you and your entire family", while others yelled taunts about Ukraine being bombed by Russia. That's when a huge brawl broke out.

"I had to answer for myself, so in the end I volunteered to go on the ice and asked my partners to support me to stand for Ukraine against the Russian horde", Ponomarenko said. "It was a wall-to-wall blizzard, but I managed to hit the target three times - the lips of the Turkish team player were definitely broken."

In the end, the game's referee handed out 124 PIM, including 91 to players with the Turkish team. The FHU is now calling on the IIHF to ban Russians from playing for any team that takes part in the organization's tournament. There has been no response to these accusations from the Russian Hockey Federation or the team from Istanbul.

Regardless of one's thoughts regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, perhaps it's not the best idea at the moment to have players from those countries competing against each other at sporting events.

Source: FHU.com

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