The appeal of the Ukrainian National basketball team players to the president of the federation Mykhailo Brodskyi and the Minister of Youth and Sports of Ukraine Vadym Gutzeit appeared in the networks.

“We, the players of the National team of Ukraine, want to openly appeal to the president of FBU Mykhailo Brodskyi, the Minister of Youth and Sports Vadym Gutzeit and entire basketball community.

Everyone knows the situation that arose last year in connection with the compulsory contribution of the basketball club “Prometey” to the FBA for participation in the Ukrainian championship, which was UAH 4.5 million, while for all other clubs it amounted UAH 40 000. The president of “Prometey” Volodymyr Dubynskyi has spoken about this in public in a large interview.

Further, the contribution was not reduced for our club and “Prometey” had to skip the 2022/2023 season of men’s Superleague. With this decision, the FBU put at risk the careers of twelve young players of the club - potential players of the National team of Ukraine, who were forced to miss this season.

At this time, “Prometey” opened its own basketball school and gave a lot of children the opportunity to play basketball in the new sports hall with modern equipment; also, the club supports young Ukrainian basketball players, who are in Riga and were forced to leave Ukraine due to the Russian military aggression. There is no secret for anyone, boys continued practising and played friendly tournaments against amateur and European teams all along the year.

On June 19, 2023, an extraordinary meeting of the FBU Executive Committee was held, where the issue of the possible participation of BC "Prometey" in the men's Superleague for the 2023/2024 season was considered. Earlier, the club addressed the FBU with a letter in response.

The decision was as follows: “Considering the fact that “Prometey” skipped the previous Superleague season and, according to regulations, can start only from a lower division (today, it’s the High League), this issue was put to a vote of the Executive Committee of the FBU.

According to the voting results, the majority of the FBU Executive Committee members made a decision to suggest “Prometey” participating in the Championship of Ukraine among the High League clubs in the 2023/2024 season.

We have to remind that the most titled Ukrainian club “Budivelnyk” skipped the Superleague championship several times and has never started from the lower division.

According to this decision, if such clubs-participants of the pre-war championship as “Mykolaiv”, “Khimik”, “Ternopil”, “Kharkivski Sokoly”, “Kryvbas” had a wish and possibility to participate in the next Superleague draw, would they have to apply to the High league first?

Amid times, when we all need to unite for the sake of Ukraine and Ukrainian sports, we have to finally do this and make a fair decisipon, which will benefit all of us” – the letter says.

The letter was signed by Denys Lukashov, Oleksandr Lypovyy, Viacheslav Petrov, Viacheslav Kravtsov, Artem Pustovyi, Volodymyr Koniev, Volodymyr Herun, Ivan Tkachenko, Illia Sydorov, Andrii Voinalovych, Illia Tertyshnyk, Pavlo Krutous, Oleksandr Kovliar, Issuf Sanon and Anatolii Shundel.