In wartime Ukraine, soccer fans bury rivalries, find calm at Premier League matches

At soccer games in Ukraine, crowd sizes are determined by the capacity of the nearest bomb shelter.

For the first time since the full-scale war began in 2022, the Ukrainian Premier League is holding a full season with fans present, as martial law bans on public gatherings have been eased.

Despite the constant threat of airstrikes, Dynamo Kyiv supporters eagerly snap up the 1,700 tickets available for each home game at the 16,000-seat Valeriy Lobanovskyi Stadium. Many fans are keen to experience a rare moment of calm, free from the country’s traditionally intense sporting rivalries.

While the war forced Dynamo to relocate its home matches in the Europa League to Hamburg, Germany, it uses its home stadium in Kyiv for domestic league matches.

Vitalii Kozubra brought his nine-year-old son Makar to watch Dynamo, a title contender, face mid-table Zorya Luhansk, a club displaced by Russian attacks in eastern Ukraine.

“Even though there’s a war going on, this is something people can enjoy together,” Kozubra said, noting the friendly atmosphere at the stadium, where Zorya fans mingled with locals.

Makar marvelled at the difference between watching a game in person and on television.

As the players took the field, all 22 of them draped in Ukrainian yellow-and-blue flags, the crowd, which included servicemen and families with children, erupted in applause.

The stadium was alive with the sound of players’ exertion and the thud of the ball. Children rushed to the touchline for autographs, drawn by the few foreign players from Brazil, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Panama who have chosen to remain despite the war.

Zorya wasn’t booed once.

Sirens and shelters

Ukraine’s 16-team top-flight league has managed to continue, despite increasing challenges. Matches are scheduled for early afternoon due to frequent power outages and the logistical challenges of travelling across Europe’s second-largest country during war.

When air raid sirens interrupt play, sometimes for hours, players and fans alike head to shelters as alarms blare from loudspeakers and thousands of mobile phones.

“This season, we’ve been lucky in Kyiv, with no air alarms during our home games,” said Dynamo club spokesman Andrii Shakhov. “But it’s a different story for away games. … The longest one we had lasted 4 1/2 hours because of four air alarms.”

Ukrainian soccer players are subject to the draft at age 25 but clubs can apply for exemptions under business protection rules. Two teams currently play permanently outside their home field due to the war, amid broader disruption, while two others withdrew after fighting started due to stadium damage.

The country’s soccer tradition dates to its Soviet past, when it was a soccer powerhouse, producing top-tier players and coaches. In the 1980s, fan movements often became expressions of Ukrainian identity, defying Soviet authority.

After Ukraine declared independence in 1991, soccer continued to be a source of national pride through years of political and financial turmoil. Ukraine reached the quarterfinals of the 2006 World Cup and co-hosted the 2012 European Championships.

Rivalries set aside

At home, supporters’ groups have set aside violent rivalries for more than a decade, ever since they united to back protesters during the deadly 2013-14 uprisings against Russian influence. Later, they organized military recruitment drives to fight in the ensuing wars.

“Dexter,” a red-bearded Dynamo supporter and civilian contractor for the military, explained why the truce among rival fan groups still holds.

“It became necessary because we needed to unite against a common enemy. These internal conflicts lost their relevance when people from rival fan groups ended up fighting together in the same military units,” he said, while walking his dog along the banks of the Dnipro River.

He added fan organizations are involved in nearly every aspect of the war effort, from active combat duty to fundraising, veteran support, and providing technical skills like computer programming to the military.

He and others serving in or working alongside the armed forces spoke on the condition that they be identified only by their call signs in keeping with Ukrainian military protocol.

Dynamo officials estimate that more than 80 per cent of their pre-2022 fanbase is now serving on the front lines in eastern Ukraine or performing other military duties.

Soccer fans at the front

Eight hours east of Kyiv, in the Kharkiv region bordering Russia, servicemen from the 3rd Assault Brigade played a match on a field near bombed-out buildings. Many of these fighters had been recruited through soccer-related channels and acquaintances.

“Organized fans play a huge role in this war because they’re highly motivated,” said a serviceman with the call sign “Shtahet,” a Dynamo supporter currently on deployment.

Combat medic “Poltava” noted that soccer remains a vital morale booster.

“We get together whenever we can and rent spaces to play,” he said. “There’s not much entertainment here, so football is our only joy.”

Back in Kyiv, Dynamo fan “Escobar” was grateful to catch a game while home on leave before heading back to the front.

“This is football, it’s a game,” the soldier said, in uniform and wearing a camouflage bucket hat, after Dynamo’s 2-0 win over Zorya. “There are no bad feelings between the teams, and it’s great to see such a friendly atmosphere.”

Vitaliy Buyalskyi and Maksym Braharu scored second-half goals for Dynamo, and even though Zorya players looked dejected as they walked off the field, they were still applauded by the fans.