KIEV, Ukraine — Anatoliy Konkov’s dark wood desk is surrounded by three portraits.

The first is an awkward-looking picture of Konkov, the 64-year-old president of the Football Federation of Ukraine, shaking hands with FIFA’s president, Sepp Blatter. The second is a photograph of Kiev’s Olympic Stadium, renovated for the 2012 European Championship, which Ukraine co-hosted with Poland.

The third, the closest at hand, rests atop a nearby cabinet. It is a gold-and-wood icon of the Virgin Mary, and it is the one he has been most drawn to in recent weeks.

“This is the faith that helps us to survive,” he said, adding, “It is a difficult situation we find ourselves in.”

That difficult situation is any number of things in Ukraine, where the government lost part of its territory to Russia this year and is battling pro-Russian separatists in at least two eastern cities. But Konkov, a former player who represented the Soviet Union in the 1970s, was referring to the way the conflict had affected soccer in the country, and in particular the three Ukrainian teams from the region of Crimea, which Russia annexed after a disputed referendum in March.