Abramovich, who has rarely seen his team in England over the last few years after withdrawing his application for a British visa in 2018, joined his players on the field in Abu Dhabi to celebrate their most recent trophy, just as he had when it won the European title in Portugal last May.
Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to Know
Card 1 of 4Civilians under fire. Russian forces targeted Ukrainian cities with increasingly powerful weapons on the sixth day of the invasion, inflicting a heavy toll on civilians. Explosions shook Kyiv and Kharkiv, while Russian troops moved to capture Mariupol in the south, a critical port city.
American airspace ban. President Biden announced that the U.S. will ban Russian aircraft from flying through American airspace. The ban follows similar moves by the E.U. and Canada to shut airspace to passenger flights from Russia and to planes used by Russian oligarchs.
Russian convoy. Satellite images show a Russian military convoy stretching 40 miles long on a roadway north of Kyiv, with a number of homes and buildings seen burning nearby. Experts fear the convoy could be used to encircle and cut off the capital or to launch a full-on assault.
Migration wave. At least 660,000 people, most of them women and children, have fled Ukraine for neighboring countries, according to the U.N. refugee agency. It’s the most intense wave of European migration since at least the 1990s.
The team’s most recent accounts provided a clear illustration of how Abramovich’s wealth has been able to subsidize huge losses in order to keep the team successful: Chelsea lost more than $200 million n its way to that second Champions League title last season. Abramovich is estimated to have invested something in the region of $2 billion in the club — interest-free loans worth about 10 times the price he paid for the team — since acquiring it in 2003.
His announcement on Saturday that he intended to hand the “care” of Chelsea to the trustees of its charitable arm, indicated that he was sufficiently worried by the prospect of the freezing of his assets in Britain to try to limit its impact on the club. The move was so surprising to those trustees that several are believed to have expressed their concerns to the Charity Commission, Britain’s charity regulator, which confirmed that it had opened a “serious incident report” in the aftermath of Abramovich’s unilateral announcement. Staff members are similarly bewildered at the pace of events.
The charity trustees, who were told of the plan only hours before it was made public on Saturday, held a meeting a day later with a specialist lawyer hired by Chelsea. It quickly emerged that moving responsibility for Chelsea into the charity would not be easy, or perhaps not even possible.
“We have contacted the charity seeking information and, in line with our guidance, the charity has also made a report to the commission,” the Charity Commission said in a brief statement.