If any European soccer club deserved some luck to get a lucrative place in the Champions League , it was surely Shakhtar Donetsk. Recent results in the Champions League, but also in the Greek and Scottish leagues at the weekend, favored Shakhtar in the often complex qualifying path for soccer’s most coveted club competition. Now the new champion of Ukraine will skip the jeopardy of three Champions League qualifying rounds in July and August to go directly to the elite 36-team main phase starting in September. That should earn at least 35 million euros ($41 million) in UEFA prize money for a club deprived of revenue during a Russian war on Ukraine now in a fifth year. Shakhtar also has since 2014 been exiled from Donetsk by the first wave of Russian-backed conflict. “I think we deserve to be there in the Champions League,” Shakhtar CEO Sergei Palkin told The Associated Press on Tuesday in a telephone interview.…