Brazilian players from Shakhtar Donetsk and Dynamo who were in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, managed to leave the country this Sunday (27).
The athletes and their families traveled by train to Chernivtsi, in western Ukraine, and from there they traveled by bus to neighboring Moldova, where they split up. Part of the group stayed in the country, part went to Romania, but all are looking to return to Brazil.
​For the last 20 years, Shakhtar Donetsk has been one of the main gateways for players from Brazil with the dream of playing in European football. Currently, the Ukrainian club has 13 athletes from the country.
Since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, in the early hours of Thursday (24), the Brazilian players of the club began to ask for the support of the Bolsonaro government to be able to leave Ukrainian territory. Some of them appeared in a video in which athletes and their families make a plea for help.
The video was recorded in a hotel in Kiev, a city that Shakhtar recently adopted as its new home. The club has not played in Donetsk, its hometown, since 2014, precisely because of military conflicts.
Eight years ago, the Russian government of Vladimir Putin made the first attacks on Ukrainian territory and the team had to leave their home, as the Donbass Arena stadium was bombed in armed clashes between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatist forces.
The team was then forced to move. First, he started playing in Lviv, about 1,000 km from Donetsk. Then, in 2017, he went to Kharkiv. And, from the 2019/20 season, he started to send games in the capital Kiev.
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