Russian rugby player Valery Morozov, who plays in England, talked about the Russian Federation’s attitude towards him in the special operations fund carried out on the territory of Ukraine.
– Due to events in the world, has your attitude towards you somehow changed?
– Not. Despite the current situation between Russia and Ukraine. At first they promised to “ask” the Russians for political reasons. It seems that it is necessary to sign some papers stating that you do not support your country, etc. But nothing like that has happened yet.
Nobody really wants to talk about it. It’s not that you don’t want to… People understand that I’m from Russia. And they understand that I am an ordinary athlete. They understand that I have nothing to do with it. And we can not be protected from competitions, we put spokes on the wheels. Here you are respected for what kind of person you are and what kind of athlete you are.
So far, not a single person has said anything to me reproaching the fact that I am Russian. No one even glanced sideways. After February 24, the attitude towards me did not change.
How is the situation in the city in general?
“The news is here around the clock. Ukrainian flags hang everywhere. In general, everywhere, literally in every store. There is maximum support for Ukraine. But somehow to belittle the Russians … This did not happen to me.
— Have you met any Ukrainians in the city?
– Meet! Someone lives with me. My wife, ha ha! It seems that we are not at war, everything is fine. He is Ukrainian, I am Russian. When people find out about this on the street, their eyes are 50 kopecks.
His wife is from the city of Konstantinovsk in the Donetsk region (At the end of May 2022, the territory is controlled by the Ukrainian authorities / – Sport24). His family recently moved to Russia, some relatives stayed there. We’ve been living with it for a long time. And what happened… We are not responsible for this.
Yes, I met Ukrainians in the city. What can I say about this? We are all hostages of the situation. I really don’t even understand what’s going on. It’s clear that something terrible has happened. But I can’t tell who is right and who is wrong. I am not a politician.
It turned out that we were staying in England with my wife because of this situation. At one point, funding was completely cut off in Russian rugby. Sanctions began to be imposed, clubs felt insecure, everything faltered. One day they called me from CSKA and said, “Valer, we have big problems. Try to find something abroad.” It was like a bolt out of the blue. I urgently needed to look for a team here in England. Leave an apartment in Moscow, everything somehow extends visas.
– Is there no conflict in the family due to conflict?
– No, everything is fine. There are misunderstandings between people on the Internet, but we try not to climb there. There is an ongoing information war. The first few weeks we read every news because we couldn’t believe it could happen. But my wife and I have been together for a long time, we have been through a lot.
— Do you have a feeling that a crisis has begun in England? Have prices increased?
— There is no crisis, people are getting high here. You go out, you see happy people. Maybe gas prices have gone up. But to be honest, I don’t watch gas. In general, I somehow did not notice that something had changed.
People simply perceive the information given to them “out of the box”. I need to explain that people in Russia live differently. Many do not know how people live in Russia and Ukraine. They do not know that they are one and the same people. They don’t know that we understand each other. 70 percent of Brits think we have bear and vodka. And that’s all they know about Russia.
But in general, people here live calmly, do not go anywhere. Yes, they support Ukraine, probably because they were told from above,” Morozov said in an interview with Sport24 correspondent Konstantin Lesik.
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