Slavutych

Smolensk sits close enough to the Belarusian border that a hockey rivalry with Vitebsk carries the name of the frontier itself.

The early years went well by the standard of regional hockey: playing in the Russian Hockey League, Slavutich won the championship twice, in 2012 and 2014, and topped the regular season in three straight years from 2013 to 2015. None of that outlasted the funding behind it. When the Smolensk regional administration stopped backing the club, Slavutich shut down in 2017.

It came back in 2024, under a new regional government, and stepped into a league across the border — the Belarusian Extraliga — as the only Russian club in the country's top division. In the 2025/26 season Slavutich reached the Extraliga final and the final of the President's Cup of Belarus, and lost both to HC Metallurg Zhlobin, finishing runner-up in each.

Home games are played in front of just 1,300 spectators at the Ice Palace Yubileyny.