Sports weekend with Izvestia

Football. Russian Premier League, Round 19, Zenit vs Baltika

The Russian Premier League (RPL) returns on February 27. The first official game of 2026 will also be the central one in the upcoming 19th round. The two teams in the top five will meet in it. Zenit St. Petersburg, coming in second, will host the main sensation of the season, Baltika Kaliningrad, which is on the fifth line, five points behind the leading Krasnodar. The meeting in the Northern Capital will largely show how capable these two teams are of competing for the RPL gold medals.

February 27, 19:00, Gazprom Arena (Saint Petersburg).

Live broadcasts on Match TV and Match Premier.

Foggy champion: the RPL expects a tight fight for gold and the preservation of registration

There are at least five contenders for the main trophy

Tennis. The ATP-500 tournament. Semi-finals and finals

The world tennis season ends with the traditional series of major tournaments in the Middle East in February. The last one, the men's one in Dubai, will be completed in the next two days. Russians Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev reached the semifinals there. The former will compete for reaching the finals with Canadian Felix Auger-Alliassim, the latter with Dutch Tallon Grixpor. If we win, we will have the Russian final on the last day of winter, the winner of which will receive 500 points in his rating of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP).

February 27, semifinals:
16:00, Auger-Alliassim – Medvedev;
18:00, Rublev – Grixpor.

February 28, 18:30, final.

Dubai Duty Free Tennis Centre (Dubai, UAE).

Live broadcasts on the ATP website.

Hockey. KHL Regular Season

At the junction of February and March, the KHL will host five matches of teams with top signage. The two leaders of the Eastern Conference will play in Omsk — the second-placed local Avangard will host Metallurg Magnitogorsk, the leader of the entire regular season of the league. Their two closest pursuers in the East, Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg and Ak Bars Kazan, will play in the Urals on the same day. Severstal Cherepovets and Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod, which are in the top 4 of the Western Conference, will meet in the Vologda Region. The next day, St. Petersburg SKA will host the current Gagarin Cup winner and leader of the West, Yaroslavl Lokomotiv. Finally, on March 1, Dynamo Moscow will face Metallurg at home.

February 27th:
16:30: G-Drive Arena (Omsk);
17:00, UMMC Arena (Yekaterinburg);
19:30, "Ice Palace" (Cherepovets); KRK "Nagorny" (Nizhny Novgorod).

February 28, 17:00, IC "Ice Palace" (St. Petersburg).

March 1, 17:00, VTB Arena (Moscow).

Live broadcasts on KHL TV, KHL Prime and Kinopoisk.

Magnitogorsk is pulling: will Metallurg be able to pass the KHL season without slumps

Razin's team leads by a wide margin in the regular season, and the fight for entry into the playoffs is almost over.

Ski racing. Russian Championship

Two major All-Russian competitions are taking place in Sakhalin this week. One of them is the Russian Ski Racing Championship, which will end on March 8. The national championship started on February 26 with women's and men's skiathlon, which were won by 2022 Olympic champions Veronika Stepanova and Alexander Bolshunov. Medals in the mixed relay and sprint will be awarded next weekend.

February 28, 08:30, mixed relay race.

March 1st, sprint:
06:00, qualification, women;
06:30, qualification, men;
08:00-08:24, quarterfinals, women;
08:30-08:54, quarterfinals, men;
09:00-09:06, semi-finals, women;
09:12-09:18, semifinals, men;
09:28, final, women;
09:38, men's final.

Triumph Biathlon complex (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk).

Live broadcasts on Match TV, Match Arena and Match Planet.

Athletics. Russian Indoor Championship

The second major tournament on Sakhalin is the Russian Winter Athletics Championships. Several stars like the 2018 world indoor champion and high jumper Danil Lysenko will gather there. The competition will be held from February 28 to March 3. This will be the main event in Russian athletics this winter.

February 28, 09:00;
March 1, 08:00.

Athletics Arena (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk).

Live broadcasts on "Match Country".

"In the international arena, my results would be even higher"

Track and field athlete Danil Lysenko — about the correspondence confrontation with the world leaders in high jumping and the chances of admission to international competitions

Biathlon. The Russian Cup. The final

The biathlon season in Russia is coming to an end. The final stages of the Commonwealth Cup with the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes are still ahead in the spring. In the meantime, the Russian Cup will end this week, the final of which started on February 26 in the city of Zlatoust, Chelyabinsk region. On the first day of the competition, the winners in the women's sprint were determined, and the winners in the men's sprint will be announced a day later. The women's and men's pursuit races and mass starts will be held this weekend.

February 27, 11:00 a.m., men's sprint.

February 28, pursuit race:
10:00 a.m., women;
12:30 p.m., men.

March 1, mass start:
11:00 a.m., women;
13:00, men.

Ski and Biathlon complex named after Svetlana Ishmuratova (Zlatoust).

Live broadcasts on Match TV, Match Arena and Match Planet.