UEFA blunder labels Ukrainian player as russian, sparks outrage

A terrible mistake appeared in Maksym Talovierov's profile on the UEFA website. The information stated that the defender from Donetsk, Ukraine, was born in... Russia. This sparked quite a storm on social media.

Ukraine drew with Belgium 0-0 on Wednesday (26.06) in the last group match at Euro 2024 in Germany. For Serhiy Rebrov's team, this meant finishing fourth in Group E (Romania, Belgium, and Slovakia advanced to the round of 16) and saying goodbye to the European Championship.

One of the players representing Ukraine was Maksym Talovierov, who started his career at Shakhtar Donetsk and now plays in Austria.

A terrible mistake appeared in Talovierov's profile on the UEFA website. The Ukrainian defender was born in Donetsk, but the European Football Federation website stated that Donetsk is... in Russia.

The official UEFA website lists Russia as the country of birth for Ukrainian footballer Maksym Talovierov. Talovierov was born in Donetsk, Ukraine - as seen on social media.

Fans unleashed a real storm in the comments. UEFA officials quickly noticed the error and changed Donetsk to a city that belongs to Ukraine.

It is worth recalling that since 2014, the city has been occupied by pro-Russian separatists, and in 2022, it was illegally annexed into Russia.

In September, President Vladimir Putin signed "agreements" to annex four Ukrainian oblasts: Donetsk (the so-called Donetsk People's Republic, DPR), Luhansk (the so-called Luhansk People's Republic), Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. In his speech before the ceremony, he called these acts irreversible.

The Ukrainian authorities deemed the Russian declarations to be legally inconsequential. NATO and the European Union assessed the annexation attempt as illegal, refused to recognise it and announced firm support for Ukraine and its territorial integrity.