Werner Wolf spoke in a calm, clear voice, his message was unmistakable.

The terrible deeds of the Russian warmongers in the Ukraine should not be forgotten, demanded the president of the Bundesliga soccer club 1. FC Köln: “Genocide is happening there, people are being killed, children are dying.

We must not stop drawing attention to it.”

And that's why the FC wants to use all its power to have Belarusian teams excluded from the European Football Union (UEFA) competitions.

Belarus is a "vassal state" that is "used as a staging area for the Russian army".

Therefore, Belarus "must not be regarded as a direct participant in the war, but as an indirect one," and an exclusion of the clubs by UEFA is "very consistent."

FC sent a letter with an urgent request to UEFA with its president Aleksander Ceferin on Wednesday and asked all the other participating teams to support the initiative.

The FC is currently still waiting for its opponent for the play-off games to participate in the Conference League.

Depending on how the remaining qualifying rounds go, Cologne could meet a team from Belarus, currently four teams are still in the running.

However, should UEFA not take action and Cologne be drawn against an opponent from Belarus, "we would compete under the current circumstances, but use the stage that we get there to demonstrate against the war".

According to Wolf, such a game would be played on a neutral pitch without spectators.

Belarus was also an unjust state in 2017 when FC made a guest appearance at BATE Borissow in the Europa League.

But now the signs are different.

The war in Ukraine "changed the world," emphasized Wolf.

In the letter signed by the managing directors Christian Keller and Philipp Türoff, the FC bosses called on UEFA to “follow the recommendation of the IOC (International Olympic Committee, ed.) and, in addition to the Russian teams, also the teams from Belarus with an immediate to exclude the effect of all European competitions”.

Most recently, the Court of Arbitration for Sport CAS confirmed that the exclusion of Russian national and club teams from international football competitions was legal and rejected protests by Russian clubs and the association.

At the end of February, the IOC issued a recommendation to the world federations of various sports to exclude Russian and Belarusian athletes.