Russian federation to surrender seat on UEFA executive committee as war in Ukraine rages on

Russia loses UEFA executive committee seat; Klaveness only female candidate; Shevchenko runs for Ukraine federation president.

Russia will no longer have a seat on the influential UEFA executive committee after the European football body's elections in six weeks.

Also, Norwegian official Lise Klaveness is the only candidate for a new quota place for women, UEFA said on Monday (February 24, 2025), and football great Andrii Shevchenko stands for the first time effectively to replace his ousted predecessor as Ukraine football federation president, Andriy Pavelko.

Alexander Dyukov, the chief executive of Russian oil firm Gazprom Neft, was not on the list of candidates published by UEFA for its election meeting on April 3 in the Serbian capital Belgrade.

Dyukov was first elected to UEFA's ruling committee in 2021 and said in an interview two years ago he would seek another four-year mandate. His absence from the UEFA candidate list was unexpected three weeks after he was re-elected president of the Russian football federation he has led since 2019.

UEFA said Dyukov did not apply to retain his executive committee seat and had not been ruled ineligible. All candidates for elections in Europe to the ruling committees of UEFA and FIFA must pass mandatory checks by governance experts.

Dyukov continued to attend UEFA meetings and games around Europe while on a British government sanctions list and during a ban on Russian teams from international competitions after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

FIFA and UEFA successfully argued at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in the early weeks of the war that including those teams would invite chaos in their competitions when some countries in Europe refused to play opponents from Russia.