Yevgeny Leonidovich Savin is 38 years old. He is a former football player and current influencer.
And then he’s a traitor!
At least if you ask around Russia.
To his more than one million followers on YouTube, Savin has been critical of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – including a documentary called ‘The War. Silent Russian players’.
Here he talks, among other things, with the Ukrainian national team captain Andrey Yarmolenko and his two club mates in West Ham Tomas Soucek and Vladimír Coufal about the consequences for the locals in Ukraine.
He begins the documentary, shot in London, by saying ‘I intend to call a spade a spade’ – and then he emphasizes that there will be no censorship along the way, like other influencers, youtubers, twitter users and other good people have taken advantage of.
‘The majority are being manipulated’
It is in Russian but with English subtitles, so many in the western world can understand it too.
And then it can be seen here
He says at one point: ‘There are people (in Russia, ed.) Who are aware that this is an invasion. But the majority of the population is being manipulated and they have no idea what is going on in Ukraine ‘.
Now that is hardly the case, but if Yevgeny Savin had thoughts of returning to Russia, then we would strongly discourage it from here. For he is hardly welcome.
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Artem Turov, who sits in the Russian parliament, the Duma, is quoted as saying:
– I saw the beginning of this nauseating video. It is clear propaganda. It is a crime against the interests of the state, it is nothing but a traitor, he says.
Oral criticism is one way to express one’s dissatisfaction. In Russia, however, there are also other buttons to press.
Excluded from training
Now take FK Krasava, Savin’s club, which was founded last year and is in Russia’s third best row. Here, according to the website sports.ru, the first team players were denied access to the training facility. Officially due to remodeling, but the other teams were allowed to train.
On Match TV, where Savin has previously been a commentator, host Anton Anisimov stated according to Finnish Yle that he wanted to spit Savin in the face.
Savin stopped a far from impressive career in 2015. He reached around the Russian U21 national team a transition as a very young man, but otherwise it was in smaller clubs that he earned his money as an honorable striker.
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He is one of very few Russian athletes who have publicly distanced themselves from the war. Many have instead praised Russia and the Russian forces for defending the country.
Veronika Stepanova, Olympic star in the Beijing Winter Games is one of them.
During last week’s Kremlin show, where the medal winners met with Vladimir Putin, she said, among other things:
– In my eyes, Russia is again a strong, proud and successful country. Not everyone loves it. It is clear. But we are on the right track and we will certainly win, as we won at the Olympics.
Chess star Sergey Karjakin and swimmer Evgeny Rylov are among the most sensational profiles, who have all praised Putin and Russia, and who have subsequently received major verbal beatings internationally. Rylov has even been ruled out for nine months by the International Swimming Union.