Ukraine invasion: Teams on patrol, tanks in stadiums and secret bunkers, meet the footballers caught up in war
“The situation is difficult as in the whole country. It’s f**king war.” These are the words of an amateur football club on the Ukrainian frontline as they strive to survive amid the Russian onslaught.
Only a month ago, the club was livestreaming its futsal matches on YouTube. Now its players fear for their lives, many only speaking on condition of anonymity.
The defiant response of elite Ukrainian sports stars to Russia’s invasion has been admirable, from the Klitschko brothers at the gates of Kyiv to Yaroslav Rakitskiy’s departure from Zenit Saint Petersburg. Braver still are those civilians caught on the frontline who are symbolising the power of sport to uplift in the direst situations.
i has spoken with sports clubs across Ukraine: those in occupied territory, those currently under bombardment by Russian forces, and those dreading the arrival of Putin’s troops.
Kolykhaev also serves as the president of MFC Prodexim Kherson, a futsal club who boast a number of Ukrainian national team players. The country’s futsal league was called off a day before Russia invaded on 24th February: no matches have since been played because of the imposition of martial law, and it is unclear if the league will ever return in areas controlled by Russia.
Outfield player and Ukrainian futsal international Petro Shoturma, 29, explained the terror of the onslaught from an underground Kherson bunker he is sharing with teammates.
“Our situation is very bad in our city with a lot of shooting and killing civilians,” he says. “We all sit in bunkers and only go out to the store if possible. The streets are in chaos and there is not enough water and everything necessary for children.”
A Russian-imposed curfew has denied them the opportunity to venture outside for long enough to assist the injured and find the missing. Shoturma explains that he and his teammates are keeping in touch via WhatsApp in their bid to stick it out, hopeful that – one day – the curfew will ease, the war will cease and normal life may return.
But right now, that all seems a long, long way away.
In nearby Kakhovka, a small city 50 miles away up the river Dnieper, Ukrainian forces are still believed to be in control. There, the situation remains tense and, like in Kherson, all sports clubs have far more serious things to concern themselves with than a Tuesday night kickabout – instead, they are assisting in the city’s defence.
“Now there is a war, football tournaments are not held and the team was disbanded,” members of Kakhovka’s amateur football club told i. “Russian troops fire on the city, killing civilians.
“Footballers of SC Kakhovka are patrolling the city and tanks and heavy weapons have been placed in stadiums.”
In its interruption of the post-Cold War order of European peace, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shocked the world. But it is in the lives of ordinary people – men and women forced to swap pitches for bunkers, stadiums for artillery positions and kits for military fatigues – that the war’s impact really hits home.
How Ukraine’s boxers are taking the fight to Russia
Usyk, Vitali Klitschko and brother Wladimir, and Lomachenko have all taken up arms in the fight against Putin’s Russia (Photo: Instagram/Facebook)
By Kevin Garside, i‘s chief sports correspondent
Vladimir Putin versus Vasyl Lomachenko is a fight few expected to see. Had Putin, a short man, taken up the gloves he might have campaigned in Lomachenko’s lightweight division.
It would have been a mismatch of course, much as it is in the social media landscape where images of Lomachenko in fatigues provided another powerful example of the capacity of athletes to stir resistance and bind a nation.
I mean who would not want to walk into battle behind a Lomachenko, a Klitschko brother, an Oleksandr Usyk or an Andriy Shevchenko?
If you want to know how serious an adversary Vitali is, ask Lennox Lewis, who fought him at short notice in 2003. Klitschko came in after Lewis’s original opponent withdrew. Klitschko was ahead on all three cards when the referee called a halt after six rounds due to a cut over Klitschko’s eye that required 60 stiches. Afterwards Klitschko declared himself “the people’s champion”. How prescient that claim was. Lewis never fought again.
Usyk, who dethroned world champion Anthony Joshua last September, has joined the Kyiv Territorial Defence unit. You would be right to assume the proposed rematch with Joshua is not at the forefront of his mind. Imagine the rousing impact that sporting heroes brandishing guns might have on an already defiant Ukraine people.
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