The war started by Vladimir Putin against Ukraine affected a well-known group in the neighboring country: Brazilian soccer players.
A group of athletes are staying in a hotel in the capital, Kiev, with family members. The most famous of the players, striker Junior Moraes, posted a request for help on his Instagram account. “All friends and family, the situation is serious and we are stuck in Kiev waiting for a solution to get out! We are inside a hotel. Pray for us!” he wrote.
He is a naturalized Ukrainian and plays for the famous Shakhtar Donetsk, a team that provided a lot of manpower for the Brazilian national team in the 2010s. He also plays for the country’s national team.
The team, as the name implies, was based in the capital of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donestk, which emerged from the civil war that hit the ethnic Russian-majority areas of Donbass (eastern Ukraine) in 2014. Since then, the team has moved closer from Lviv, at the other end of the country.
The eventual evacuation of Brazilians, a community that does not reach 500 people in Ukraine, will be a big headache for the local embassy. The representation is preparing an action, but it basically depends on the evolution of the military operation. It took everyone in the region, on both sides of the border, by surprise despite Western warnings.
In Russia, the Brazilian embassy has about 200 students in contact, part of them in the regions closest to Ukraine, such as Rostov. They were instructed to provide details and contacts in case a withdrawal was necessary.
Again, it’s a logistical nightmare. Russia has closed air traffic in the southern region of the country, including 12 airports — the largest, Rostov-on-Don, included. THE sheet left the city for him, late on Wednesday afternoon (23), when there was no sign of the impact that would be seen the following morning.
For now, however, the chance of the conflict extending in the opposite direction, towards Russia, seems none. As a Brazilian businessman who lives in Moscow said, if the sirens sound in the city as they did in Kiev, it won’t do much good to want to flee: we will be talking about a nuclear attack.
