The Premier League is home to multiple Ukrainian players, who are unfortunately witnessing a war in their home country. One of them is Oleksandr Zinchenko, who recently gave an emotional interview, telling his experience of dealing with the war. During the most recent Manchester City match, the player expressed his support by carrying the flag of Ukraine to the pitch. The news of war-
Meanwhile, Russia continues to ravage his home country, the news of war . So far, more than one million Ukrainians have left their homeland. Many more are staying behind to fight the invaders. In the process, the international community is showing strong support to Ukraine. This is expressed by sanctioning Russia heavily and providing financial and material aid to Ukraine.
Ukrainian players like Zinchenko see it as their responsibility to inform the world about Ukraine. True, they are widely popular athletes so they are perfect ambassadors for their country. the news of war-
Zinchenko retells the story of how he first found out about the war. He says he was woken up by his wife, who told him the news while crying. The player says he didn’t believe the news at first. His wife had to show him all the pictures and videos of the ongoing war, which started at early dawn to fully utilize the element of surprise.
As time goes on, Ukrainian footballers all around the world are still struggling to deal with this fact. They have friends and family who are still in Ukraine, some of them are fighting back against the invading forces. Surely many of these athletes want to be with their comrades, but they have their duties as athletes to think of.
Zinchenko talks about how he feels identifying as Ukrainian, and tells the story of Ukrainian people, who never give up. He says people from this country will give everything they have to protect their homeland. Fortunately, Oleksandr says he received a lot of support from British people around him, even the fans of rival sports teams. Britain is truly actively supporting Ukraine itself, and recently has made the decision to seize the assets of Russian billionaires associated with Putin. Many believe that this is why the Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich made the decision to sell Chelsea Football Club.
Strangely, Oleksandr says that he receives lots of messages from people back home. Despite the war, which has been going on for almost 10 days now, Ukrainian people are continuing to watch football and feel the support from the players and the British people. Some of them can even visit 22Bet to bet and watch football games with even more excitement.
All this support has further emboldened Ukrainian people, who already have shown strong will in resisting the occupation to maintain the freedom of their country.
Oleksandr says that the Russian disinformation campaign is strong, but he feels like it’s his responsibility to spread the truth about the wishes of Ukrainian people.
The truth is, the situation in Ukraine is fairly difficult right now. The Russian military had little success in most of their operations, but they have largely achieved their objectives in the south of Ukraine. They are currently trying to cut off their access to black sea, to make sure Ukrainians don’t receive shipments from the sea.
Oleksandr says that ultimately, the goal of publicly talking about the war in Ukraine is to raise awareness in the country. He also wants regular people, as well as governments to be more active in their support of Ukraine. He seems to be succeeding in this task.
The Ukrainian is disappointed that no major Russian footballer has come out to oppose the pointless war. Some Russian footballers have even expressed their support for it. Russia has been recently banned from participating in the upcoming international competitions, but this doesn’t seem to phase Russian footballers just yet. Oleksandr Zinchenko feels like these Russian footballers could use their social influence to promote change in their home country. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened yet.
It’s going to be really difficult to drive change in Russia, where Putin has a tight grip on power. Despite potential repercussions, it will be necessary for influential people – including celebrities – to come out and express their disapproval of the war. Currently, Putin’s regime is strongly opposed to even calling it a war. Their propaganda machine is spreading the message that this is just a ‘military operation’.
Still, it will be a very unpopular event to arrest beloved footballers, actors or actresses in Russia. Because of this, these athletes and celebrities could be in a perfect position to express their opinions in hopes of changing something. This ought to have a snowball effect, which will encourage even more regular people to come out in the streets and do something to change the regime. Despite the risk to their personal safety, Russian people have taken to the streets – but not in massive numbers.