Ukraine set to restart soccer league as war rages on

Shakhtar Donetsk's players ran out onto the pitch for their final training session on Monday before Ukraine begins an extraordinary new season of its national soccer league. As Ukrainian soldiers battle Russian forces in the east and south, Shakhtar are due to play Metalist 1925 from the embattled eastern city of Kharkiv in the opening game of Ukraine's Premier League at 1000 GMT on Tuesday. The match in Kyiv kicks off a day before Ukraine marks six months since Russia invaded its smaller neighbour in a war that has killed thousands of people, displaced millions, destroyed whole cities 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 brutal three-month siege that Ukraine says killed over 20,000 residents. Pavelko said much of the impetus to restart the soccer 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.