‘I cry every day’: In the stands with Ukrainians as Dynamo Kyiv play again

Club started ‘match for peace’ series in Warsaw watched by thousands of refugees from Russia’s attack on their homeland

Spectators support their team during a friendly charity soccer match between Legia Warszawa and Dynamo Kyiv at the Polish Army Stadium in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, April 12, 2022. Ukrainian soccer club Dynamo Kyiv will play a series of charity games on a government-backed "Global Tour for Peace" that will raise money for the country's military in the war against Russia. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Far away, at the other end of the pitch, a Ukrainian footballer is scoring what later turns out to have been a beautifully worked goal. That is something remarkable in itself but Oksana is talking and the backdrop has become a detail. She is thinking about the train she will board in around nine hours; it will return her to Kyiv, at last, and from there she will join the volunteer effort in Bucha. The home she left is 10 miles further south, in Boyarka. Like most of the capital’s satellite towns, it has undergone its own visit to hell.

“Tomorrow they are burying one more of my friends, but I won’t make it in time,” she says. “Many have gone already and I have no idea whether I will ever see many more of them again. Two close friends were killed while they were helping to evacuate people. They were found in a mass grave with evidence that they were tortured. And I know that there is more of this to come.”