'I AM CRYING EVERY DAY' IN THE STANDS WITH UKRAINIANS AS DYNAMO KYIV PLAY ONCE MORE

Football club kicks off its ‘match for peace' series in Warsaw, watched by thousands of refugees and fans seeking national solidarity

- Nick Ames

Fans light flares in Ukrainian colours. Proceeds from the game went to those affected by the Russian invasion

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 15km 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. "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.”

Oksana's story drowns out the clamour of a football game. It is delivered matter-of-factly. “My mind is just trying to reject the reality," she says. “I just disconnect my feelings. It's going to come later, I'm aware.”

She has wrapped herself in a Ukraine flag and is far from alone in that. About two-thirds of an 18,000 crowd inside Legia Warsaw's stadium are her compatriots. Some live here; many have arrived through necessity. They are nominally here to watch Dynamo Kyiv play the host club in the first of a “match for peace" series that will raise money for the response to Russia's invasion and see them face several other European teams.

Players and mascots wear Ukrainian flags before the match in Warsaw