Union of European Football Associations Development Tournament (of UEFA) will be held in Sochi in March 2026. The general secretary of the Russian Football Federation said this in an interview Maxim Mitrofanov.

“Development Tournament” of UEFA for the men’s team under 16 years old will be held in Kazakhstan in April 2026. There will be Kazakhstan, Russia, Azerbaijan and a fourth team, which is still being finalized,” Mitrofanov said. — We also plan that the U17 youth team will play at the Development Cup in Minsk in February outside the window FIFA. Additionally, we will host a development tournament in March of UEFA among girls in Sochi with the participation of the U16 team. The same team must take part in the development tournament of UEFA in Belarus in April. Now of UEFA approves the training of participants in the Sochi tournament.”

Russia has hosted development tournaments of UEFA in 2023, 2024 and 2025. In February 2022 of UEFA and the International Football Federation suspended Russian clubs and national teams from participating in international tournaments.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has placed the former president of the Ukrainian Football Federation (UAF) on the wanted list. Andrei Pavelko. This comes from Ukrainian data Ministry of Internal Affairs.

According to the database, Pavelko is accused of two criminal articles: embezzlement, misappropriation of property or misappropriation of property through abuse of office, committed on a large scale or by an organized group, as well as official forgery.

On October 9, it became known that the former UAF president had been indicted on new charges. As clarified by the Strana publication, the investigation believes that Pavelko and a group of other Ukrainian football officials took possession of 9.32 million euros, which UAF received from the Union of European Football Associations (of UEFA) in 2015-2016.

Pavelko had previously been accused of carrying out bribery schemes during the construction of a plant to produce artificial turf for football pitches. In this case, the president of the association was arrested in November 2022, but managed to get bail. In June 2023 he was arrested again; only in February 2024 did he win the appeal and was released. In the same year, according to Ukrainian AveragePavelko traveled abroad, submitting a certificate of disability. Then “Strana” associated the persecution of Pavelko with the fact that Vladimir Zelensky was pressuring him to force him to hand over the position of president of the association to Ukrainian footballer Andrei Shevchenko, who eventually led the UAF in January 2024.