Former coach of the Ukrainian national team Andriy Shevchenko wrote a letter about the war in Ukraine for The players tribune portal.
Andriy Shevchenko and Robert Lewandowski. Photo: gettyimages.com“I was sleeping when the phone rang. It was my mom. I looked at the clock. It was 3:30 a.m. When your mom calls you at this time, it's never good news, right?
I think the moment I saw the phone, part of me already knew. I will never forget the date: February 24, 2022. For several weeks everyone was worried, but not a single normal person wanted to accept what might happen. But when I saw a phone with my mom's name on it, I started to delve into it. She cried when she told me that she felt her building shaking from the explosions.
We turned on the news, and here it is. War. In Ukraine. It's like time has stopped. I felt so helpless. And I felt guilty.
I was supposed to be there, in Kyiv, with my mother. It was her birthday a couple of days ago and we were going to have a family dinner at her house with my sister and a few friends. I even booked tickets from the 19th to the 29th, but due to some paperwork I needed to complete in the UK, I changed my flight to the 26th.
A few hours after the call, moms began to receive videos from friends and on social networks. Russian helicopters over our land, rockets hitting our roads, bridges and airports, huge traffic jams of people fleeing from Kyiv. In one day, thousands of people who lived all their lives in Ukraine became refugees.
I was shocked. I have four children. It’s impossible for me to understand all this - imagine what it’s like for them. My youngest is eight years old. How to explain to him???
I can't tell you how many times I had to charge my phone. All day long I called people: friends, family, former colleagues and teammates. Are they safe? And what about their families? What happens next? How can I help?
You panic because decisions can suddenly change someone's life.
I remember at some point I just froze. I turned to my wife and said: "I don't know what to do...". My first impulse was to take my family out of the country, but both my mother and sister told me the same thing - I remember my mother's words on the phone so clearly: “I'm not going to leave now. This is my home".
That night, we saw President Zelensky send a clear message to the people. He told us that he would not leave Kyiv, that we should unite to protect our land. This was our future. It was a choice between whether our country exists or not.
At that moment, your perspective, your priorities, your whole world changes.
What is success? Is it winning a football match? Is this the Champions League? Earn Money? Have a good business? None of this is real. Small problems, small disagreements disappear. Everything else disappears. Success is freedom. Success is survival.
In the following days, we all started listening to stories. Not only did many people decide to stay, but other people from all over the world returned without hesitation to protect our land. They didn't even stop to think about the consequences, they just knew they had to go...
I heard about 20-year-olds holding roads for hours because they had to defend their village from invaders.
I heard about people who ran into collapsed buildings because they needed help to evacuate their neighbors.
I even heard about a husband and wife, both doctors, who went to Irpin to help in the hospital when bombs were falling on the city. They left a message for their friends: "If anything happens to us, you have a legal right to take care of our children." Can you imagine asking something like that?
The couple remained in the hospital for several days while the city was demolished helping people. In the end, they returned to their children, but they put everything at stake to help their country.
I know many such stories. Hero stories.
I have heard stories of incredible courage, but also of incredible pain and suffering. My aunt was locked in her basement for four days during the bombing. She was able to escape to my mother only when the Russians stopped for half a day. I have close friends who died. Amid the chaos, we had no time to grieve.
I still felt guilty. I wanted to be there, see the situation, protect my land and rescue my family. I needed help. At some point, I told my mother: "I'll be back." But she told me: “Andrey, what are you going to do here? You are not a soldier. You need to stay where you are.
“Go to the media. Tell them the truth about what's going on. This war is not only on the ground with guns and bombs. This is information. You can use your profile, your connections. Collect funds. Get supplies and support. You can help more where you are."
I listened to my mother and tried to make her proud of me. In the days that followed, I did my best to help in any way I could. It was amazing to see people all over the world doing the same. The democratic world stood together.
People called me from all over the world - from Italy, the USA, Germany, everywhere. People from all over the world are doing their best to raise funds, send aid or just bring people together locally to make sure their friends and families are safe.
We called each other: “My friend is in this village... my uncle is in this city... my grandparents are stuck in their apartment... do you know someone nearby who could check if they have everything in OK?"
So many people asked for favors. Nobody ever said no. People in Ukraine know what it means to be free, because we created this country together.
We have a new country with an old history. Our culture, language and history go back centuries, and we gained independence only 30 years ago. Because of this - especially people of my generation - we feel that Ukraine has grown with us. And this connection means that we never want to lose it.
My history is the history of Ukraine.
In the years before independence, I fell in love with Kyiv as a child, traveling alone around the city to play football every weekend. From the age of nine, I traveled by bus and subway to where I was supposed to play. I learned the geography of the city from the location of football fields.
I have my own story for every event in the modern history of Ukraine. When the Chernobyl disaster happened and we were evacuated from Kyiv, I remember how my dad took a Geiger counter on one of the soccer balls that I brought with me, and how it showed 50 times more than the norm - then he had to set it on fire!
When independence finally came in 1991, I played for about a month in a tournament with Dynamo Kyiv Academy near Moscow. Every day I watched the news in our hotel... Gorbachev, Yeltsin, all this mess. This false reality of the collapse of the USSR. When we left by train to return home, we were still part of the Soviet Union. And when did we get on the platform in Kyiv? We have arrived in an independent country!
I remember flags. Blue and yellow everywhere. Everyone was so happy.
I experienced the same emotions when I put on the national team shirt for the first time in the U-16 game - Ukraine - the Netherlands (2: 2) in Lviv.
If you don't know, let me tell you that football is a very important part of Ukrainian life. It's sport No. 1. I grew up idolizing legendary Dynamo players like Oleg Blokhin and Igor Belanov - those amazing Ballon d'Or winners - but my generation united people differently. The game had a different meaning for us. We created something more than football. It was about national identity.
It is hard to even imagine the atmosphere in Lviv that evening. The stadium was full. Thousands of people came to watch the youth team play! They came to see how their team plays in Ukrainian colors and hear Ukrainian speech in the stands. That night, people came to see the Ukrainian, not the Soviet team.
When I came out as captain, when we hosted Euro 2012, everyone was so proud of what we can do as a nation. We have come a long way. We have worked hard to build these stadiums and improve the service and hospitality so that guests from all over Europe can see our country and love it as much as we do. As soon as Poland and I were declared the hosts of the tournament, I dreamed of playing in this tournament. When it finally came, I was almost 35, physically suffering from back pain... but I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
It was a great summer and a high point for us as a nation.
Just 10 years after Euro 2012, when Russia invaded, for the first time it looked like we could lose everything we worked so hard for. Our common history.
We know we cannot let this happen.
We have been at war for more than six months now.
Thanks to the incredible resilience of our military and the reaction of the democratic world, we can say that we are still here. Some people are returning home. The football season has even resumed. We are fighting for a normal life.
But this is not the end. On February 24, we did not have time to think, grieve, be in shock. But now we all feel. Pain and destruction are visible to all. Don't look away.
Make no mistake, this can happen anywhere. It affects everyone. This is a fight not only for Ukraine, but for all democracy.
You may be reading this thinking that you are safe, that it is just some distant place, that it cannot touch you. Maybe quite recently, many in Ukraine thought the same way. The truth is, the world doesn't work that way. This can happen again and again if we don't learn our lessons and stick together.
I have already been home twice as part of my work with the Laureus Sports for Good Foundation and President Zelensky’s United24 initiative. I saw reality.
The first time I returned to Kyiv was in April, having arrived by train from Poland. Silence is the first thing that strikes. I don't know if you have ever traveled by train in Ukraine. If yes, then you know that it can be noisy. Crowded carriages, families talking loudly, children running down the aisles. Laugh.
It was the opposite. Quiet, half-empty carriages, empty faces that do not express any emotions. We were entering a war zone.
On the station platform, I saw soldiers lined up waiting for their families. Mothers, wives and children cry in each other's arms. The families were reunited after several months apart.
After that, I spent hours walking with a friend through the streets of Kyiv. I wanted to see the places of my childhood, to make sure that they are still standing, to hug people, to feel their emotions.
This is my city, which I got to know while traveling in the subway as a child. Every corner, I have a story or a memory. But now everything is closed. I couldn't believe how few cars were on the streets. The only real sound was the air raid siren, six or seven times a day. The first time you hear this, it's really shocking.
We drove away from the city, past the roadblocks, and went to the area where I grew up, to the schools I knew, to the fields where I played.
When you see places from your childhood bombarded with rockets, buildings destroyed by fire, it does something to you.
Further from Kyiv, the destruction is worse.
On my second visit, I saw Irpin. This once was a beautiful city, full of new buildings ... now there is simply nothing there. Black. flattened. Destroyed.
I went to Borodyanka, Bucha, Gostomel, and the same thing happened there. This is what you must see with your own eyes. This is not a movie. This is real life.
Further east, in the Dnieper, I went into the children's departments of the hospital and saw boys and girls of six or seven years old with terrible injuries.
I heard stories about bombs that hit their homes and took away their legs, their arms, their families. I went from one room to another, and another, and another.
To be honest, after the second room, I didn't want to continue. I couldn't take it anymore. There was too much sadness.
This is war.
And for what? I can't find the reason. I cannot explain this to my children, nor to any sane person.
People are returning for repairs and rebuilding, but the situation is critical. There are so many families living in overcrowded temporary housing without access to basic services. And soon it will be winter.
We need to continue to raise funds and donations to support those who are still in the country and those who have been displaced. And we need to keep telling the truth about what's going on.
I am still an optimist. I see light in the darkness. I see progress. I see a future for my country. I see it very clearly.
This war has changed us, but I know it hasn't changed what we value most. This is our land, our freedom and our future.
We will survive to continue writing our common history together.
I want to finish by telling you something else that I saw during my visit to Irpen.
The city used to have this beautiful football stadium, as well as a new academy with artificial pitches. After the bombing, only one field remained untouched. I spoke with the mayor about a fundraising initiative to restore the rest of the fields, but so far they are still full of craters, debris and fragments.
Despite everything, I still saw a group of children, no older than 12 years old, kicking the ball together. These children should never again experience what they have already experienced or play in such conditions. This is not a place for children.
But still they are there.
For me, this is the spirit of Ukraine.
This is my priority right now.
My work with Laureus so far has included visiting a refugee program in Warsaw, where Ukrainian children who have lost their homes and loved ones and traveled hundreds of miles in search of shelter and safety have used sports to try to overcome their psychological crisis.
I have also met with other top athletes who are helping to keep the cause going. I met Iga Swiatek at her exhibition match to raise funds for Ukrainian refugees in Krakow. I gave Robert Lewandowski, one of the first athletes to compete against Russia, a captain's armband in Ukrainian colors to take with him to the World Championships.
The world of sports has the ability to influence opinion and even politics when it comes to this war.
Every time I visit the Laureus program, it reminds me that in this day and age, perhaps more than ever, sport really has the power to change the world.
Andrey Shevchenko
