The Ukrainian defender of Manchester City Oleksandr Zinchenko declared this Saturday to the BBC that if he were not the father of a girl would have decided to go to his country to fight in defense against the Russian invasion.
Several active and retired sports stars, such as world heavyweight boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk, have taken up arms. “To be honest, if I didn’t have my daughter, my family, I would be there“, Said the 25-year-old footballer.
ukrainian pride
“I am very proud to be Ukrainian and I will be for the rest of my life (…) I know my people, the mentality of the people of my country. They prefer to die and they will die, but they will never give up,” he added in one interview granted to the British television network, on the eve of the Manchester derby, corresponding to matchday 28 of the Premier League.
Zinchenko told how he lived the night the invasion of Ukraine began. “My wife woke me up and she was crying. She was in shock. She showed me the videos, the photos of what is happening now in Ukraine,” he explained.
“The closest thing to the feeling I had is maybe when a family member dies. You know, that feeling of feeling very bad inside of you. But it was worse, I did nothing but cry,” he added.
Zinchenko, who played for a year and a half at Russian club Ufa before joining Manchester City, laments the silence of the Russian footballers. “I was surprised that no one, not one of them” has spoken out against the invasion, he said.
“Most of them play in the national team and they have many subscribers on Instagram, Facebook, etc. They could at least do something to stop this war, because people listen to them (…) but they don’t, they pretend it doesn’t exist (the situation). I don’t know why,” he added.
AFP
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