Orrenius: The football attack in the spring evening breaks through my raised guard

We have eaten chicken with dill- and butter-lung potatoes, my inherent denys and me. Dill is wonderfully large in Ukraine. Now we relax on the TV couch.

It is a late night in Kyiv, just over three years into the full -scale invasion. The wing alarm has come and gone. The air defense shot down the Russian drones this time, nice.

We are tired after A long day. Denys has moved into the military and goes his undergraduate education, before being sent to the front. This day he has dug trenches on an exercise field outside the city.

I have struggled with an article, and pondered over the Trump Sender Steve Witkoff’s words that he « does not consider Putin as a Bad Guy« 

Deny’s zapping to A sketch program from quarter 95, the humor group that Volodymyr Zelenskyj started long before he went from TV comedian to president in 2019.

Quarter 95 is named after a block in the war -tormented steel workshop Kryvyj Rih, Zeleskyj’s growing town. Every week, civilians are killed in robotic attacks there.

– But check out here. This is a charkiv just half an hour ago, says Denys and holds out his mobile.

We often do that. Has the TV on and at the same time follows the war in our mobiles. Flashes, clips, war maps. A village in Donetsk taken by Russian forces, an attack on a hospital in Sumy, executed prisoners of war. We show each other clips, shake their heads, swear.

Denys comes from Kupjansk Outside the big city of Charkiv and has extra control over its home areas in eastern Ukraine. Kupjansk was occupied during 2022 and now the Russians are standing again outside the city. Denys worries for his parents who live.

The clip he wants to show is from an evening -lit football pitch in Charkiv.

– I’ve played many matches on this pitch, he says.

On his mobile screen I see players and spectators flee in panic. In the clip you hear the nasty moped -like sound that all Ukrainians know means danger. The knuckling engines come from attacking Shaeder, Iranian -made Russian attack drones, which in public are called just mopeds.

The dark sky Above the pitch flames up, an explosion is heard. Then the clip ends.

– It was an amateur match that was interrupted. Fenix ​​against LFK Fenix, says Denys.

– Are both teams called Fenix? I ask sheepish.

– Yes. There are three or four amateur teams that are all called Fenix ​​in Charkiv.

Denys is a skilled Football player, team captain in his hometown club Kupjansk FC when he has the opportunity to join. Last autumn Told photographer Anders Hansson and I about his coupjan team that refuses to give up. Although their home plan has been destroyed by Russian robots, they are struggling in the local series, on borrowed plans.

The report on football in the middle of the war received great response from DN’s readers. It was the same With « Ukrainian Fashion Week »a glassy fashion show in Kyiv. Those texts found more readers than many other articles from the War Ukraine.

I don’t think it’s strange or wrong. It is difficult to relate to war. Washing for the horrible is a natural impulse.

And the killing becomes normal After a while, though it should never be. We see it with Gaza, with Sudan, with Congo, with Yemen.

In Ukraine, hundreds of soldiers are killed every day at the front. Sometimes over a thousand. As it continues, year after year, a hopelessness occurs. To be able to take in what happens, you sometimes have to pee, look a little from the side.

I also work that way. My gard is high all the time. I write about massacres, rapes and kidnapped children, but use the professional role as a mental shield.

But then there will be a clip From a football pitch in Charkiv. An electric lighted plastic green that looks like a thousand others around the world. It could be Skytteholm in Solna, Heden in Gothenburg or Sorgenfri in Malmö.

Young people with spreading legs gathered in the spring night because they love football. Everyday life, joy of life. And so the Russian attack.

I see the clip again. Football players are desperately running in different directions. Who knows where the drones should hit? Someone throws themselves straight down on the green carpet, protecting the head with their hands.

I pepper Denys With questions: What does he know about the law? Which neighborhood is the plan in? Does he know someone who was there?

Later that evening, Ukraine’s president posts the same clip. The drones also met residential buildings. Zelenskyj writes that eight people were injured in the attack, and that one of them was a twelve -year -old girl.