This Autumn, as part of the 2022 schedule of fixtures in the IFAF European Championship (M-Tackle), the following 3 nations were due to play each other either at home or away: Great Britain, Italy, and Russia. On Thursday 24th February, the Russian military became actively engaged in Ukraine. Following this engagement, various members of the international community sought to impose sanctions on Russia in response. These sanctions covered a breadth of inter-related areas: economic, transport, energy, defence, raw material, alongside diplomatic measures. Russia has also taken steps to respond to various members of the international community. The collective impact of these measures has made it increasingly difficult for any of our member federations to effectively plan for the fixtures involving the national team of Russia - including the national federation of Russia. As a consequence, IFAF has adopted the following position with regard to the following fixtures: Russia v Italy Great Britain v Russia The current political situation in response to the events on and since February 24th is an event of force majeure, which is beyond the control of the national federations of Great Britain, Italy and Russia [the 'Parties'], which the Parties could not have reasonably provided against before entering into the tournament, which could not reasonably have been avoided or overcome, and which is not attributable to any of the Parties. Under these circumstances, IFAF finds that the cumulative effects of the sanctions prevents the Parties from performing all or part of their agreed obligations in regard to the specified fixtures. As a result IFAF releases each federation from further performance of the obligations concerned in these scheduled fixtures. In terms of the current competition IFAF will adopt the following position. The two fixtures will not be recorded as official fixtures and as such will not appear on any official record of the competing nations. They will not contribute to the standings in the Group. The game scheduled between Italy and Great Britain will still take place and will determine the nation which comes top of the Group and which comes second. No nation shall be relegated from the Group following this round of fixtures. IFAF will keep the situation under review for the next iteration of fixtures following the conclusion of the group games this Autumn. Ends