He will be assisted by Aleksey Shiryaev and Igor Knyazev. The fourth official will be Roman Galimov. VAR will be operated by Artyom Chistyakov and Aram Petrosyan.

In the previous 14 Zenit games refereed by Pavel Kukuyan the team from St. Petersburg won eight times, lost three times and three matches ended with a draw. The last match was on 4 September 2022 when Zenit won 2-1 against Spartak at the Otkritie Arena.

The match against Fakel will take place at the Central Stadium, Voronezh on Saturday 8 October and will kick off at 2pm St. Petersburg time.