Ruslan Kul

A season in the Second League, Group 3, made Ruslan Kul's name: eight goals in 30 matches for Sokol Saratov, and the club's supporters voted him their best player of 2021. Sokol finished the 2021/22 campaign as silver medallists.

He came to that season by an unusual route. Kul started in the youth ranks in Saint Petersburg, then joined the Lokomotiv Moscow academy in 2017 and stayed through the 2018–19 season, turning out in the Russian Youth League and the UEFA Youth League. He scored against Porto in that competition. In 2019 he switched to the Arsenal Tula youth set-up, and his senior career began at Khimik-Arsenal in the Tula region a year later.

The move to Rodina Moscow in July 2022 brought a bronze medal in Group 3 of the Second League in 2022/23 — Kul scored twice in 28 appearances across the first team and Rodina-2 — but also two spells away. He was loaned to KAMAZ in Naberezhnye Chelny for 2023–24, where he managed three goals in 19 games, and then to Shinnik Yaroslavl the following season.

Shinnik kept him. The permanent transfer went through in July 2025, and Kul went on to make 53 appearances and score three times for the Yaroslavl club before Orenburg paid a fee of €33,000 for him on 30 January 2026. His contract there runs until 15 June 2028.

He has not yet been called up by Russia at any level, senior or youth, despite those European nights with Lokomotiv's academy side.