Shakhtar Donetsk’s objectives used to be confined to silverware but now the storied Ukrainian football club have loftier aims, financing hospital care abroad for wounded soldiers and finding new homes for orphans.
Former Nigeria international Julius Aghahowa twice featured for the Ukrainian side between 2000 and 2007 as well as 2009 t0 2012.
The club – whose lifting of the 2009 UEFA Cup makes it one of only two Ukrainian teams to win a European club competition – has through its foundation Shakhtar Social spared no expense since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
They have paid 100,000 euros ($110,000) each for five severely wounded soldiers to be sent for medical treatment in hospitals in Israel, the United States and Spain.
“You cannot imagine what injuries they have,” Shakhtar CEO Sergey Palkin told AFP in a phone interview. “Two of them are paralysed, others suffered catastrophic wounds in a rocket detonation.
“It is very difficult to control one’s emotions when one sees them.
“We want to give them a chance of a normal life. These hospitals have very sophisticated procedures.
“The families cannot sustain those expenses and the government has no capability to provide this financial help so we are taking care of them.”
Children have suffered too amid the death and destruction. Some have been killed, some have been left as orphans and others have been forcibly taken to Russia.
“We have looked after 31 children, who lost their parents due to the war and we have found them 17 families,” said Palkin. “We provide living expenses, medical treatments, iPads and try to normalise the situation from a psychological point of view.
“These children have been left traumatised by the violent loss of their parents.”
Shakhtar’s Ukrainian international defender Ivan Petryak knows what it is like to lose a family member.
His father-in-law Ivan Petrenko was killed in action in the Donbas in May last year.
“The guys who were with him saw him die,” Petryak told AFP. “For us as a family it is the worst situation as we cannot find the body and we cannot make the funeral to say goodbye.
“This is the worst for us as we do not know what to do as we have no information about him.”