KYIV (AP) – At football games in Ukraine, crowd sizes are determined by the capacity of the nearest bomb shelter.
For the first time since the 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.
“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 marveled 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 four hours because of four air alarms.”
Ukrainian football 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 football tradition dates back to its Soviet past, when it was a football powerhouse, producing top-tier players and coaches. In the 1980s, fan movements often became expressions of Ukrainian identity.
After 1991, football 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.
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.
“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.
RIVALRIES SET ASIDE
He added that fan organisations 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.
FOOTBALL FANS AT THE FRONT
Eight hours east of Kyiv, in the Kharkiv region, servicemen from the 3rd Assault Brigade played a match on a field near bombed-out buildings. Many of these fighters had been recruited through football-related channels and acquaintances.
“Organised 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 football 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.”
