On a bridge on the main road that leads into Kryvyi Rih, someone has installed a banner on which five words are written, draped down so nobody who passes beneath can miss them: “Welcome to hell, Russian occupant”. To the south of the city, Kherson has been captured. To Kryvyi Rih’s east stands Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest. It is also under Russian control.
Kryvyi Rih is a mining city, the second biggest in Ukraine by area. It is a crucial location in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine because it provides the only viable entry point to Dnipro, one of the country’s foremost industrial hubs. It has also become famous as the hometown of modern Ukraine’s most famous son.
Volodymyr Zelensky was born in Kryvyi Rih, where his father was a professor at the University of Economics and Technology and his mum worked as an engineer. His comedy group and film production company were named after the Kvartal 95 housing block in which he lived as a child. His parents still own an apartment in the complex, although they were moved on the eve of war.
Kryvyi Rih is also home to FC Kryvbas. Its men’s team participate in the Ukrainian second tier, but its women’s team were third in the highest division of Ukrainian women’s football and challenging for the title when the league was suspended.
On 24 February, the squad climbed onto a bus headed for the local airport – they were flying to Belek in Turkey for a training camp ahead of the end of the winter break in Ukraine. On 24 February, Russia began its invasion of Ukraine. On the same day, Russian forces struck two military installations in Kryvyi Rih with missiles and everything changed.
That shift can be best seen in two Facebook posts from the team’s head coach Alina Stetenko, less than 48 hours apart. The first discusses the plans for the warm weather camp and talks of playing three matches during which work will focus on game patterns with and without the ball. The second shares information from the Moldovan government about entering the country from Ukraine without an identification card or visa.
“It was early morning,” says Violetta Tian, one of FC Kryvbas’ players. “We were incredibly scared. We heard three major explosions and we decided that the bus should take us to a safer place in the centre of the city where we would be in less danger. Our sanctuary was a hotel owned by the man who also owns our football club, so the conditions were thankfully fine. We had meals and we could sleep. We stayed there for two weeks.”
Their escape came via Artur Podkopayev, a twentysomething Hamburg resident who had played in FC Kryvbas’ youth teams as a child, winning a national championship before he moved to live in Germany. When the invasion began, he phoned his old coach Evhenii Arbuzov who was now the club’s technical director and asked him about the club’s situation. Arbuzov told him the news of the women’s team, and the pair worked on a plan to get the squad to Germany. At that point, Podkopayev says, everything was decided. The team had to move to further safety.
“I always wanted to go back to Ukraine to help people, but for various reasons it wasn’t possible,” he says. “Ukraine will always remember people who have helped them during this war, both its own citizens and those from other countries. They will always have in their heads those who helped and those who didn’t. The message has to be that we are stronger together and with strength we can overcome evil.”
Podkopayev reached out to FC Koln, who deserve huge praise for the haste and extent of their welcome. Koln, Podkopayev and Arbuzov worked alongside three charitable foundations in Cologne to organise accommodation for the players and coaches and ensured that food, clothing and supplies would be readily available.
But leaving home with little time to prepare creates its own wounds. The players were not able to retrieve extra belongings from their homes. Tian says that she could not say goodbye to her parents because they live in the north of the country where the Russian army was already in control. They are able to keep in contact via various messaging services and platforms and, for now, they are safe.
“Everything changed overnight and it changes you emotionally too,” says Anna Ivanova, the team’s captain. “You come to value different things in different ways. Before the war, material possessions appeared important and now they are meaningless. And the things that used to seem unimportant, everyday things, now have a greater importance than we could ever have known.”
“It is a shitty feeling to have to leave your house not because you want to but because you have been forced out,” Tian says. “We are incredibly grateful to the city of Cologne and to FC Koln and all of the volunteers who have helped us in Germany. But the overriding feeling is that this doesn’t feel like home. We just want to go back to Ukraine, to Kryvyi Rih and to once again play for a club that plays in its home country.”
The gratitude to FC Koln is obvious; it is merited too. The concept of a football family is wonderful in theory, but you sometimes doubt its real-world practicality. Not here. Koln invited the team as guests of honour to both the men’s fixture against Dortmund and the women’s match against Bayer Leverkusen. They have also allowed them to use the club’s training complex as much as they would like. The two young women have just arrived back at their accommodation after one such session.
Training has been welcomed as a way of passing the time, but the notion of football as escape only stretches so far. “When we are training, it’s a wonderful distraction,” Ivanova says. “We can laugh and smile and when we are training we only think about football. But as soon as we get back on the bus and we read the news, it all comes back to us. We are back in reality again.”
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Some of the squad are also dogged by guilt because they are a few of the few while many others remain at home. When those others include your closest family and friends with whom you have shared at least half a lifetime, guilt mixes with angst and is multiplied. Players have spoken of a second-hand insomnia, the inability to sleep because you know the explosions and sirens are stopping millions of others sleeping too.
They cannot escape the news from Ukraine, from Kryvyi Rih, Mariupol, Kharkiv and beyond. Nor do they want to, as upsetting as it might be. Despite regular updates from family and friends that they are safe and surviving, their city stands at the epicentre of a war that their compatriots are fighting desperately to win against all the odds. Having managed to find refuge, thoughts inevitably turn to those who could not escape.
“When we were in Ukraine, we were always watching the TV because the news was on all day long,” Tian says. “When we moved abroad we had less news. But we are all always checking social media. It’s important for us to know how our cities and our country are coping. Even if we feel nervous or are afraid of what we might read, we have to know what is happening to our home.”
For now, Kryvyi Rih is being defended. On Monday, Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the Kryvyi Rih Regional State Administration, announced that Russian troops had been forced at least 40km back from the city. It also still remains high on Russia’s list of next objectives and its people are preparing for street battles. Locals have armed themselves and are determined to make good on President Zelensky’s lead. Zelensky was not universally popular in Kryvyi Rih before the election but they have been surprised and impressed by his strength over the last month.
What strikes most about Tian and Ivanova is the fierce pride they have for their country, doubled down by the distance they now temporarily live away from it. Both express their gratitude for President Zelensky, who they see as a regular man doing extraordinary things. Think of the image of Zelensky created in Europe, the comedian who became the leader who became the symbol of resistance, and multiply it several times over.
“We are extremely proud of the Ukrainian army and the Ukrainian people, because I think they have become something quite unique: at one together,” says Ivanova. “With this mentality we believe that we can win this war. That is the same mentality that we have in our team, that everyone is a unit and looks after each other and nobody is left behind. That spirit of the country has brought us closer as a group.”
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They are also insistent that a no-fly zone must be installed over Ukraine. It is the first time they speak over each other, to reinforce the point. If they have one main message it is that everyone can do something to help, to make a difference. If the skies over her city are not closed, Ivanova says, more women and children will die. “Please help us by doing that.”
I wonder what these two young women, these professional sportspeople forced out of their everyday normality overnight and through no fault of their own, miss most about Kryvyi Rih. I am primed to expect answers relating to football: the first training session, the first match, the first goal, the first shared experience of absolute normality rather than a manufactured construct of it hundreds of miles from home.
But football isn’t mentioned once. Tian talks of the streets you walk along in half-thought and the houses you occasionally notice because you have never noticed them before. She thinks fondly of the specifics of her own home and the bizarreness of missing an entire country, as if countries have their own distinct feeling.
“I’m looking forward to seeing my family, firstly; that’s obvious,” Ivanova says. “But beyond that it’s the ability to do normal things without planning them first or worrying if they are even possible, like sitting outside in the sunshine with a plate of food. More than anything, I want to talk about meaningless subjects that have nothing to do with war.”
But until then, only war. Even in Germany, only war. They train for matches that are not yet scheduled, because there is only war. And only the end of war can bring a return to the lives they once knew and to the Ukraine they long to see again. “Our country isn’t real without peace,” as Tian says. “First comes peace. Then comes everything else.”
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