‘The military call and I deliver’: voices from Ukraine’s football after year of war

When Russia invaded I knew I could not stay still. On 23 February our team had flown back into Kyiv from a training camp. I began to work with volunteer organisations in Lutsk, where I lived with my family, and twice took groups from Kyiv to the Polish border by car. Nothing felt safe: I arranged for my wife, children and mother-in-law to travel to the Czech Republic and then asked myself what I could do next. I have never held a gun, so decided to immerse myself in volunteering.

I am originally from Slavyansk, a city in Donbas. My parents are still there and they have faced a war since 2014. The Russians occupied Slavyansk for a long time; mum and dad pulled through, but dad had a stroke that has made things very difficult.

Now Ukraine holds Slavyansk but the situation across the region is critical and very dangerous. So I started travelling there with humanitarian aid for civilians: things were developing quickly and the frontline was only 15 miles from the city. I went there, to Kramatorsk and around nearby villages, helping whoever I could, and met a lot of soldiers along the way. I resolved to help them too.

Combining volunteering with my football career is hard, but it is what I want to do. I play in our Premier League games and then spend the rest of the weekends on trips to Donbas. I go to Bakhmut, Soledar – before the latter’s occupation in January – and other frontline cities. The military will call and request, for example, a thermal imager: I collect money, find one and bring it to them.

Sergey Lavrienko, our coach at Inhulets until November, knew about my work and was happy for it to continue when the season resumed. After we had restarted training in the summer, one of our brigades in Donbas was badly