Ukraine Hopes to Co-Host World Cup with Poland; Talks Focus on the 2040s

[Financial News] Ukraine, which has been under Russian invasion for nearly five years, said it hopes to co-host the World Cup with neighboring Poland, despite ongoing tensions between the two countries over historical issues.
Matvii Bidnyi, Ukraine’s minister of youth and sports, said in an interview with the U.S. political news outlet Politico on the 4th local time that Ukraine is considering a joint World Cup bid. He said, "The earliest time we could host the World Cup would be sometime in the 2040s. We need to start planning now based on that outlook."
Politico reported that Poland is also considering co-hosting the World Cup with Ukraine. The issue was discussed informally at a Ukraine reconstruction conference held in Poland last June.
The 2030 World Cup will be hosted by Spain, Portugal and Morocco together with three South American countries, while the 2034 tournament will be held in Saudi Arabia. Several European countries, including the United Kingdom, France and Germany, are discussing bids for tournaments after 2038.
Bidnyi said Poland and Ukraine successfully co-hosted the UEFA European Football Championship, UEFA Euro 2012, and that submitting a World Cup bid "could also attract investors’ interest." The Ukrainian government, the World Bank Group and the European Union (EU) previously estimated that $588 billion would be needed over 10 years to rebuild and restore Ukraine. That figure is about three times Ukraine’s nominal GDP last year.
Ukraine’s soccer-related facilities have suffered extensive damage since UEFA Euro 2012. Donbas Arena in the eastern Donetsk region, which hosted five matches during UEFA Euro 2012, has not held a game since the outbreak of the Donbas conflict in 2014, and the stadium was damaged by shelling. FC Shakhtar Donetsk, which uses Donbas Arena as its home ground, plays domestic matches in western Ukrainian cities such as Lviv, far from the front line. For home matches in European club competitions, it rents stadiums in Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and elsewhere.
Ukrainian politicians hope that co-hosting the World Cup would help improve relations with Poland, which has supported Ukraine during the war but remains strained by long-standing historical disputes. Vasyl Mokan, deputy chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s Committee on Youth and Sports, called it "more than a major sporting event" and said it "would be a powerful symbol of European solidarity with Ukraine."
During World War II, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, and an armed independence movement emerged after Germany’s invasion. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the armed organization that led the struggle, has been accused of cooperating with Germany and carrying out massacres of civilians in an effort to claim Poland’s Volhynia region as new territory. After the war ended, Poles retaliated by attacking Ukrainian civilians. In May, the Polish government said it would revoke an award presented to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2023 after the Ukrainian government gave a special operations center of its armed forces the title “Heroes of the UPA.”
 
[email protected] Jong-won Park Reporter