Shakhtar train amid air raid sirens as Ukraine league prepares for restart - in pictures

Shakhtar Donetsk players ran out on to the pitch between air raid sirens for their final training session on Monday before Ukraine begins a new season of their national league.

As Ukrainian soldiers battle Russian forces in the east and south, Shakhtar are due to play Metalist 1925 from the eastern city of Kharkiv in the opening game of Ukraine's Premier League on Tuesday.

The match in Kyiv kicks off a day before Ukraine marks six months since Russia invaded its smaller neighbour and is still raging on.

"This will be a unique competition: It will happen during a war, during military aggression, during bombardments," Andriy Pavelko, head of the Ukrainian Association of Football, told Reuters in an interview.

Matches will be played without fans in the stands due to the risk of bombs and missiles. Two top-flight clubs - Desna Chernihiv and FC Mariupol - are being replaced in the 16-team league after their stadiums were destroyed in fighting.

FC Mariupol's whole future has been thrown into question after Russia captured the club's home city in a three-month siege.

Pavelko said much of the impetus to restart the football season in the fraught circumstances had come from President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the Ukrainian army, who hope the league will help lift national morale.

"Many people at the front lines asked us to start thinking about restarting football in our country," Pavelko said.

He toured Ukraine in March and April to convince club presidents not to let their teams wither away, and to prepare them for a new season, he said.

Shakhtar, one of the favourites for this year's title who will also compete in Europe's Champions League, are no strangers to war: they had to relocate from their home city of Donetsk in 2014 when