Assistant to the Russian President Igor Levitin said that Russian sports federations, including the Russian Football Union (RFU), need to intensify cooperation with Asian federations.

— How do you feel about the transition of sports federations to Asia, in particular the RFU?

— You see, as soon as we started considering the transition to the Asian confederation, they immediately started having problems with the Olympic Council of Asia. Of course, we must continue to work in this direction. But we must understand that colleagues may have problems due to the performance of our athletes at their competitions. Let’s wait to see if we will compete at the Asian Games in China, where we were promised a quota. At the moment everything has stopped there. Nevertheless, I believe that we do not need to stop, we need to continue to develop cooperation with Asian federations,” Levitin told Match TV on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum.

In the spring of 2022, FIFA and UEFA suspended Russian clubs from competitions under their auspices due to the situation in Ukraine. At the end of December, the RFU initiated the creation of a working group to interact with UEFA and other organizations regarding the return of Russian clubs and national teams to participate in official tournaments. At the same time, discussion of the idea of ​​the RFU transferring to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) was suspended.

In February 2023, the Russian Chess Federation announced its transition to the Asian Chess Federation.

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