VTB United League Takes the Detour: Sergey Kushchenko's Diplomatic Gamble

Sergey Kushchenko did not name a single club. He did not name a date. He did not name a format. In an interview with the Match TV channel, the President of the VTB United League confirmed exactly one thing: negotiations to bring foreign clubs back into the league are still ongoing.

After thirty years of observing sports at the macro level, and twenty-two consecutive years of commentating the NBA Finals, I have drawn one rule few people notice. When the head of a league chooses to speak publicly about an unfinished negotiation, that is not a results bulletin. That is a staged performance. And this performance can go down one of two entirely opposite paths: either a return to Europe, or a declaration that Europe is no longer needed. I lean toward the second path. The rest of this article explains why.

The VTB United League was founded in 2026, carrying the ambition of binding the post-Soviet space together with an orange ball. In my memory of that period, the league was a shared home for CSKA Moscow, Zenit, UNICS Kazan, Khimki and Lokomotiv Kuban, alongside names from beyond Russia's borders such as Tsmoki-Minsk of Belarus and Astana of Kazakhstan. In its golden years, the VTB United League and the EuroLeague overlapped their calendars, and Russian clubs played in both arenas at once. The boundary between a regional league and a European league blurred to the point that nobody bothered to draw it.

In 2026, that curtain fell. Russian clubs were removed from the EuroLeague and EuroCup, the two highest tiers of continental basketball, operated by Euroleague Commercial Assets, known as ECA. Returning does not require a FIBA resolution. It requires the signature of ECA. That is the core difference most readers skim past: the right to play in the EuroLeague is not a sporting citizenship, but a private property right — granted, withheld, and refused. And that signature, to date, does not appear in any statement by Kushchenko.

That is the starting point of the whole story. The VTB United League is not applying to rejoin the EuroLeague as a member. It is looking to build something else — and the way it does so reveals more than any press release.

Reading Kushchenko's statement, two clear tracks emerge. Track one: bringing a Serbian club into the VTB domestic championship as a full participant, meaning a full annual season, with a calendar, a standings table, and revenue sharing. Track two, far lighter: organizing joint tournaments with foreign organizers — friendly or invitational events — so that Russian clubs can meet teams currently playing in the EuroLeague and EuroCup.

These two tracks are not equivalent. They differ in legal nature, in binding force, and in the number of signatures required. Track one is nearly impossible in the near term. Track two is immediately feasible. And the fact that Kushchenko places both on the table at once shows this is not a plan, but a risk-management strategy.

Serbia is the only country named outright. Not a specific club — that matters — but a whole basketball nation, accompanied by an institutional figure: the Vice-President of the Serbian Basketball Federation, Filip Sunturlic. When a cross-border negotiation is recounted through the name of a federation official rather than a club, the parties are implicitly saying one thing: the permission must come from the federation level, not merely from a club's goodwill.

Why Serbia? There is a historical reason and a structural one. Historically, the Russia–Serbia sporting relationship runs decades deep. Structurally, Serbian basketball is one of the few places in Europe where a negotiation like this can occur without being blocked at the door. But structure also raises the biggest obstacle: Serbia's top clubs — Crvena Zvezda, Partizan — are already committed to the ABA League, also known as the Adriatic League, and to the EuroLeague. They have no free calendar. They have no room to add another foreign domestic championship.

In other words, a Serbian club formally joining the VTB championship is not a matter of money. It is a matter of calendar and loyalty. And neither can be negotiated in a few-minute interview.

The legal mechanics of this negotiation deserve close dissection. In basketball, there are multiple tiers of competition organization, differing in binding force. At the highest level is full membership of a competition operated by ECA, requiring the operator's consent. At the lowest level is a friendly or invitational tournament, where governance requirements are far lighter, mostly needing approval from the organizing and host federations.

The second track Kushchenko mentions is a way around the locked door of the EuroLeague: instead of asking permission, one organizes events that fall below the threshold requiring it.

This is a familiar technique in international sport. When the top tier closes, people do not pound on the door. They find another door, or cut one through a side wall. An invitational friendly tournament needs no ECA signature. It can be called a preseason event, a friendly super cup, or a regional invitational — and every name lowers the governance requirements.

Note that Kushchenko mentions the Serbian Super Cup and Expo-Basket as the settings for the exchanges. This is not a trivial detail. Peripheral events like super cups, exhibition games and preseason friendlies are precisely where officials from two countries can meet most naturally, least formally, and most quietly. If you want to test a negotiation without making it official, you do not fly to the annual meeting of the European giants. You meet in the corridor of a super cup.

Event diplomacy. That is the real playground of this story.

Why does the VTB United League want this so badly? The answer lies in a fact that arguably needs no stating: after 2026, the number of foreign teams in the league fell sharply, and with it the media value, sponsor appeal, and international broadcast contracts. A league of Russian teams playing only each other is less sellable abroad than a league with a foreign presence.

This needs little debate, because it is a law of the sports media business: cross-border games always attract neutral viewers more than a domestic derby in which they have no team to support. As someone who has tracked the movement of media value across many leagues, I see in the VTB United League a familiar problem of isolated leagues: isolation does not kill immediately. It erodes slowly, from sponsorship money to the eye of the broadcaster.

But this is also where I want to separate myself from the popular reading. The popular reading holds that the VTB United League is trying to return to Europe. That reading matches the presentation, but may miss the motive. A league may want to internationalize for two very different reasons: one, to return to the European system as a member; two, to build a parallel system that is international in name but operated by itself. Kushchenko speaks of meeting EuroLeague and EuroCup teams. He does not speak of returning to the EuroLeague. There is a very large gap between the two.

I once wrote about a similar situation in Vietnamese football, when Hanoi FC held 64% possession but lost to Quang Nam at home in the 2026 V.League final. The lesson that day was not in the possession share. It was that people built a castle on sand and then convinced themselves the sand was stone. The VTB United League story has a strangely similar note: a collective with substantial resources, confident in its own strength, operating inside a system whose rules it does not write.

People call me a spoiler. I am only listening to the screech of the wheels. And the screech I hear here is this: quite possibly, what the VTB United League is building is not a road back, but a managed road away.

Imagine the worst-case scenario for observers hoping for reintegration. Joint friendlies with Serbia take place. A few invitational events succeed. No club joins formally. The EuroLeague does not change its position. But with each small event accumulated, the VTB United League presents itself as the center of a new cross-border competition system. First a few games. Then a periodic invitational. Then perhaps an expansion to Belarus, Kazakhstan, even a second federation expressing interest in joining.

At that point, what has been built is no longer an apology to the EuroLeague, but an alternative competition operated by those who were once excluded from the old system.

That is the scenario I call a coalition of the willing. No need for Europe to agree. Only for each partner to agree, individually, event by event. Each federation need only approve its club's entry into an invitational — a small decision, low political risk, easy to justify domestically. Add many small decisions together, and what emerges is a new competition system sitting parallel to the sanctioned one.

If that happens, it is no longer news about a negotiation. It becomes news about a split in European basketball. And this is why I call it a diplomatic gamble rather than an administrative step forward.

Where could I be wrong? Three places.

First, Serbia may be only a stepping stone and the real goal is still a return to the EuroLeague. If ECA shows any sign of easing, even in a few years, everything in this article collapses in the opposite direction, and the friendlies become merely a springboard.

Second, I may have overrated the structural dimension and underrated the human one. Kushchenko is not merely a league president. He is a man who has tied his whole career to running basketball, and such a person does not necessarily want to split the system. He may simply want an honorable seat in the old house.

Third, money. If a major sponsor or broadcaster powerful enough speaks up in favor of reintegration, the entire parallel logic can be cast aside simply because it does not generate as much profit as the sanctioned route.

But even if I am wrong, it is a useful wrong. Because both scenarios lead to the same understanding: the VTB United League will not sit and wait. It is moving, and the direction of that movement matters more than its speed.

So here is what I will be watching in the coming months. One: a Serbian club named outright. That is the first confirmation signal, turning intent into a path. Two: a joint tournament announced with full format, dates and participants. That is the nearest achievable outcome. Three: any reaction from ECA or FIBA, because that is the only signal of whether the sanctioned system is paying attention.

And what I truly want to leave with the reader, after all this analysis, is something simpler. A sports culture does not die from being excluded from a competition. It kills itself when it believes there is only one path to survival. The story of the VTB United League, however it ends, is a large lesson in the survival instinct of a sporting nation pushed to the margins: when the front door closes, people do not stand weeping at it. They find another wall to drill.

And sometimes, the most frightening thing is not the wall being drilled. It is the number of people waiting on the other side.