Ceferin announced the unchanged position of UEFA on the exclusion of Russia from tournaments.

UEFA's position on the issue of suspending Russian national teams and clubs from international competitions remains unchanged. This was stated on February 12 by the president of the organization, Alexander Ceferin, commenting on the words of FIFA President Gianni Infantino about the need to consider lifting the ban on Russia.

"The story [about Russia's return to international tournaments] has become too loud for no reason <...> UEFA's position is clear, it has not changed, but we monitor the situation every day," he said at a press conference following the UEFA congress in Brussels, a recording of his speech published on the organization's website.

Ceferin added that he could not comment on FIFA's decisions or the actions of national governments, but was closely monitoring the situation.

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On February 2, Infantino announced the need to consider lifting the ban for Russian teams. He added that the opportunity for Russian boys and girls to play football in other parts of Europe would be beneficial.

The Kremlin agreed with Infantino's opinion that Russia and other countries should not be excluded from competitions because of politics. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said that it was "high time for the FIFA organization to think about the return of the Russian national team to international football competitions.

On the same day, the Ukrainian Football Association (UAF) expressed disagreement with the statement of the head of FIFA and called on Infantino not to change his position on the issue of suspending Russians from football competitions, calling the participation of the Russian national teams a threat to the safe conduct of competitions. In addition, Infantino was added to the database of the Ukrainian extremist website "Peacemaker".

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