EU officials have discussed banning footballers from participating in the 2018 World Cup in Russia

European Union officials have discussed banning footballers from participating in the 2018 World Cup in Russia, as part of a wider package of sanctions designed to curb the behaviour of President Putin and Moscow’s military involvement in Ukraine.

The measure is part of a likely widening of sanctions against Moscow if the violence in eastern Ukraine, blamed on Russian military incursions and its supplies of arms to separatists, continues.

The budget for the tournament is ­expected to be £12 billion. There will be 12 arenas spread over 11 Russian host cities: Moscow, Kaliningrad, St Petersburg, Volgograd, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Saransk, Rostov-on-Don, Sochi and Yekaterinburg.

The threat to boycott the World Cup underscores the mutual hostility and mistrust between Russia and the West in the