The former captain of Russia ’s national football team fears he could be “jailed or killed” for speaking out against the “complete horror” of his country’s war against Ukraine . Igor Denisov, 38, is the most prominent athlete who lives in Russia to address the conflict and call for an end to the violence that began when Vladimir Putin ’s troops invaded Ukraine in February. In an interview with sports journalist Nobel Arustamyan on YouTube, he said: “To me, this war is a catastrophe, a complete horror.” The former Zenit St Petersburg star, who captained the national team from 2012 to 2016, also referred to war protesters in the country who have been detained by Russian authorities. He added: “I don’t know if I’ll get jailed or killed for these words.” Russian authorities have been cracking down on dissent ever since the invasion started and the country’s parliament recently passed legislation that could see protesters get 15 years in prison<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The former captain of Russia’s national football team fears he could be “jailed or killed” for speaking out against the “complete horror” of his country’s war against Ukraine.Igor Denisov, 38,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,70],"tags":[58,71],"class_list":["post-18661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}