“We’ve just finished the game, our local championship,” Sergei Palkin says. “We won 1-0.”
It’s Monday evening and Shakhtar Donetsk’s chief executive officer sounds mildly disappointed that the team didn’t score a couple more goals against Livyi Bereh in the Ukrainian club’s first game back after the winter break. “We played well but we were not so lucky,” Palkin adds.
Shakhtar are third in the Ukrainian Premier League, eight points behind the leaders Dynamo Kyiv with a game in hand. Well, not a full game, actually. More like 39 minutes, and Shakhtar already have the lead courtesy of a goal from a player who is no longer at the club.
Three days before Shakhtar were due to travel to the city of Kryvyi Rih for a game against Kryvbas at the start of September, the hotel where they had planned to stay was hit by a Russian missile, destroying the building and killing two people.
A sense of panic spread among the Shakhtar squad, their families, and the players’ agents, leading to Palkin receiving a wave of anxious messages asking what the club proposed to do. In the end, the team stayed in another city, a couple of hours away, and travelled to Kryvyi Rih on the day of the match.
A goal from former club captain Taras Stepanenko, who now plays for the Turkish club Eyupspor, put Shakhtar ahead at the break, but an air raid alert early in the second half forced the match to be stopped in the 51st minute. Both sets of players, and everyone else at the game, took cover in shelters.
Yana Stepanenko, 13, who lost her legs in Russian missile attack on Kramatorsk, led both teams out at the game marking the anniversary of the invasion (Photo by Les Kasyanov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
It’s not uncommon for that kind of thing to happen in the Ukrainian Premier League — Shakhtar played a match against Dnipro at the end of last season that took more than five hours to complete because of multiple interruptions. Against Kryvbas, however, the delay was so long that the game ended up being postponed.
Shakhtar will now have to return to Kryvyi Rih in the next couple of months and carry on where they left off. “There is 30 minutes that we should play, so we are trying to find some kind of window to finish this game,” Palkin says. “Can you imagine what sort of championship we have? We are living in a different world.”
It is a world that, sadly, has plunged Ukraine into darkness.
This interview takes place on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion. It is a poignant day in Ukraine and prompts moments of deep reflection.
Three years, I suggest to Palkin, must seem like thirty. “I have feelings like it’s never ending,” he replies. “Human beings adapt to everything. But, to be honest, people are very tired here. The players are very tired. The club is very tired. And, if you’re talking about Ukraine, the whole nation is very, very tired.”
On Monday night against Livyi Bereh, Shakhtar’s starting XI lined up on the pitch before kick-off wearing T-shirts that captured the indefatigable spirit of Ukraine: “3 years of perseverance”, “3 years of struggle”, “3 years of courage”, “3 years of heroism”, “3 years of unity”, “3 years of will”, “3 years of bravery”, “3 years of dignity”, “3 years of fury”, “3 years of defiance”, “3 years of faith”.
Standing shoulder to shoulder, the Shakhtar players had a letter on the back of each T-shirt spelling out the word UNBREAKABLE.
Yana Stepanenko, a 13-year-old girl who lost her legs when a Russian missile hit a railway station in Kramatorsk, in Donetsk, in April 2022, killing more than 60 people, led both teams out. This weekend Yana is taking part in the Tokyo Marathon Friendship Run, representing her country and raising awareness around prosthetics for Ukrainian soldiers.
Devastating stories of life-changing injuries and fatalities can be found everywhere in Ukraine, including inside the Shakhtar Donetsk dressing room. The father-in-law of Ivan Petryak, Shakhtar’s 30-year-old winger, was killed in the war. Dmytro Riznyk, the team’s first-choice goalkeeper, lost his brother in the conflict when a mine exploded.
In November, Denys Tvardovskyi’s father died on the frontline and you would need a heart of stone not to be moved by the sight of the 21-year-old goalkeeper fighting back tears during a minute’s silence before Shakhtar’s match against Rukh Lviv as he looked up at a photo of his father on the giant screen in the stadium.
We are with you, Denys! 🙏🧡
Dmytro, father of Shakhtar goalkeeper Denys Tvardovskyi, died at the front while defending Ukraine.
May the memory and respect for him live forever. Glory to the Heroes!#Shakhtar #Ukraine
— FC SHAKHTAR ENGLISH (@FCShakhtar_eng) December 1, 2024
Palkin exhales. “We lived for three years in this kind of nightmare,” he says.
“Yes, they play on a big level, but they are 20, 21 years old. They are almost children. And can you imagine to lose your father, to lose your brother, and after that, in three or four days, you should go and play football again and again… it’s very difficult.
“We understand what kind of words we need to use to support our players. Sometimes it’s financial support too. But most important is the mental and moral support of our boys. We stay like one family.”
Football, on the face of it, seems totally unimportant in Ukraine. Some might say irrelevant even in the context of a conflict that has brought so much pain and suffering to the country.
Yet there were reasons why President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave his approval for the Ukrainian Premier League to resume in August 2022, after the previous season had been abandoned following the outbreak of war.
Professional football provides a symbol of hope for the Ukrainian people and, at the same time, feels like an act of defiance in the face of the Russian invasion. It is also a welcome distraction from the grim and depressing reality of everyday life.
“We wanted to continue to play because we wanted to show everybody in Ukraine and all over the world that Ukrainian football is alive,” Palkin says.
“Also, yes, we have war. We have very hard times. But sometimes people should pay attention to something different from war — I mean to forget about war for two hours of our game. When, for example, we are playing and we win, especially in European competitions, we are bringing a lot of positive emotions to our people. And for our people it’s very, very important because 95 percent of all news in Ukraine is negative news. War. War. War. War.”
Shakhtar players and fans celebrate a goal against Dortmund in the Champions League in January (Photo: Pau Barrena/Getty Images)
That narrative is almost impossible to escape, even when the conversation involves football. When Palkin starts talking about how a small number of people were allowed back into stadiums a little while ago, it prompts me to mention that attendances across Shakhtar’s Ukrainian Premier League games this season vary from around 600 people to 3,600.
“Yes, because this number should correlate to seats in shelters, under the stadium,” Palkin says, pointing out something I had never stopped to consider.
The word ‘shelter’ is a little generous. “Sometimes it’s just parking located under the tribune, not outside of the stadium,” Palkin explains. “And sometimes even in dressing rooms, because if dressing rooms are located inside of the stadium, in a specific distance between the open air and the building, you can stay inside. Sometimes we have shelters outside of the stadium, and you should run there. We tried to use everything we can to cover our players and our fans from these attacks.”
It’s hard to imagine a more challenging environment to run a football club, let alone one that had already been in exile for eight years prior to Russia’s invasion. Shakhtar have not played at the Donbas Arena, in their home stadium in the east of Ukraine, since 2014, when Russian troops annexed Crimea and war broke out in the region.
The club has lived a nomadic existence ever since, hosting Champions League football in six cities across Poland, Germany and Ukraine. Domestic matches are currently played in the city of Lviv, close to the Polish border, while the main training base is in Kyiv.
“We are writing a new history of football,” Palkin says. “You will not find any club in the world with a destiny like ours. A lot of people in Europe and the world are touched and inspired by our story. We symbolise our Ukrainian nation — people who never give up.”
The challenges are constant for Ukrainian clubs and that includes a bleak financial landscape. Domestic revenue from TV rights, sponsorship and ticket sales has plummeted, leaving Shakhtar overly dependent on income from player sales, Champions League prize money (they will pick up just over £20million/$25.1m after finishing 27th out of 36 in the league phase this season) and, more than anything, the support of their billionaire club president Rinat Akhmetov.
Akhmetov’s backing is one thing; convincing players to move to Ukraine to play football is quite another. Palkin has talked previously about trying to “guarantee some kind of security” prior to players joining, but can Shakhtar really do that? And presumably some players just say “no” straight away because they are too afraid?
“Everybody is afraid,” Palkin replies. “Foreign players are afraid, Ukrainian players are afraid, I’m afraid — because I am responsible for everything if something happens.
“Sometimes I am spending 60 to 70 per cent of the negotiation time just (trying) to convince players, the family of players, and agents, to come to Ukraine. We are doing zoom calls, talking and explaining how we move, where the shelter is, what happens if something goes wrong etc, etc. All the logistic stories, communication stories, I should explain.”
Palkin says the dream is for the war to finish (Photo: Pavlo Conchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The fact that there are eight Brazilians in Shakhtar’s current squad suggests that Palkin is doing a good job of assuaging any fears. That is a market that has been particularly fruitful for them in the past – Fernandinho, Willian and Douglas Costa are among a long list of Brazilians to have played for the club – and Shakhtar hope they have signed another gem in the shape of Kaua Elias, an 18-year-old forward who joined from Fluminense for £14million in January.
On paper, it feels like things have almost gone full circle since the outbreak of war, when Shakhtar had 14 foreign players, including 12 from Brazil. An exodus followed, leading to Shakhtar winning the title in 2023 with a team made up predominantly of Ukrainians. Now the Brazilians are back en masse.
“I can tell you it was difficult to invite and sign the first Brazilian player. But when you sign the first one, it’s much easier,” Palkin says.
“If you’re talking about Elias, we connected him with Kevin, our winger, and with Marlon (Gomes), our No 8, and they know him and can explain to him the situation: where we have summer and winter training camps, where we stay in Ukraine, where we play the championship games etc, etc. So, step by step, we are bringing them.”
Palkin smiles. “But you are just seeing the successful stories. We have a lot of unsuccessful stories too.”
Mykhailo Mudryk.
You can hear the excitement in Palkin’s voice as soon as he hears the name. You can also hear the disappointment when he thinks about what has happened to Shakhtar’s former star and the most expensive Ukrainian footballer in history.
“Mudryk is special!” Palkin says. “Yes, he has a problem now with doping, and we are all trying to help him because I know the story from the inside, and I know 100 percent that he didn’t use any doping.”
In December, Mudryk was provisionally suspended by the English Football Association after testing positive for the banned substance meldonium. Both Chelsea and Mudryk issued statements saying that the player had never “knowingly used” any banned substances. Everything now hangs on whether the ‘B’ sample shows evidence of meldonium too.
“For Mudryk, it’s nonsense to use some kind of drugs because from his natural skills, he already has everything — and most important is speed,” Palkin adds.
Signed in January 2023, Mudryk has never really got going at Chelsea. He has shown flashes of his ability, for sure, but Chelsea, and perhaps everyone else in English football, expected more.
Palkin’s assessment is interesting. “When you don’t know how to run a Ferrari, it’s better you don’t touch a Ferrari,” he says. “Chelsea changed a lot of coaches. One guy arriving after another one and another one. So it’s difficult for him to find, let’s say, his coach. But I know 100 percent he is a very unique player.”
Mudryk is awaiting the return of his ‘B’ sample (Photo: Daniel Kopatsch/Getty Images)
Mudryk’s departure to Chelsea guaranteed Shakhtar £62m, which was both welcome and timely on the back of a turbulent summer.
In June 2022, FIFA announced a ruling that stated foreign players and coaches had the right to suspend their employment contracts with Ukrainian clubs until June 30, 2023, unless a mutual agreement could be struck between a player or coach and their club by June 30, 2022.
Shakhtar had planned to sell their foreign players to raise crucial funds to cover the club’s financial losses and also to assist their humanitarian response to the war.
Instead, Shakhtar ended up writing off a predicted £40m in transfer fees, prompting the club to challenge FIFA’s new ruling at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Shakhtar lost the case and Palkin remains bitterly upset with what he describes as FIFA’s “complete ignorance” of everything that Ukrainian football is going through.
“When FIFA all the time says, ‘We are one family’, where is this family located?” he asks. “Maybe Ukraine is not part of ‘one family’ from FIFA’s perspective.”
It makes you wonder what Palkin thought of the comments that Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, posted on Instagram after attending The Future Investment Initiative Priority Summit in Miami last week. “Congratulations President Trump for your speech, which puts peace and unity in the centre of everything. It’s time for everyone to embrace unity and peace in the world.”
On Friday, talks between US president Trump and Zelenskyy ended in an extraordinary public row at the White House.
“This unity he’s talking about, we should feel it from the beginning of war. But we didn’t,” Palkin says. “He (Infantino) didn’t help Ukrainian football.”
FIFA declined to comment on Palkin’s remarks when approached by The Athletic.
For Palkin, there is a much bigger picture than FIFA. It is a picture that transcends everything, including his hopes of returning to Donetsk one day and the stadium that Shakhtar will always call home.
“We have just one dream,” he says. “To finish this war.”
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Photos: Les Kasyanov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images, Shakhtar Donetsk)
