Today, the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne published a decision regarding O.M. Sobutsky, who was disqualified by disciplinary bodies of the Ukrainian Football Association (UAF) for assaulting an official after one of FC «Agrobiznes»'s matches (Volochysk).

CAS confirmed O.M. Sobutsky's guilt in assaulting the match official and strongly condemned this act, calling it unacceptable and intolerable. At the same time, CAS decided to reduce the disqualification period to a ban on any football-related activity for five years. Considering that O.M. Sobutsky committed such an offense for the first time, the arbitrators at CAS concluded that his complete exclusion from football for five years is a sufficiently severe punishment.

The court noted in its decision that O.M. Sobutsky denied any violations on his part and expressed no remorse for what he did.

CAS emphasized that the sanctions applied in this case should serve as a deterrent to other individuals involved in managing football clubs or UAF. According to the court's reasoning, completely excluding O.M. Sobutsky from football activities for five years achieves the goal of applying a «zero tolerance» principle to all similar manifestations of unacceptable behavior and strongly discourages any possibility of recurrence or similar conduct by others.