‘Nothing can sway us’: inside Shakhtar’s quest for glory in wartime

The Ukrainian champions face Barcelona on Tuesday at a time when, as one staff member puts it, ‘nothing is OK really’

It is unseasonably warm but the leaves cloaking Sviatoshyn Olympic Centre are turning the same hue as Shakhtar Donetsk’s orange shirts. The sky is clear and the two training pitches pristine. A radiant, textured scene tucked away far from the city’s noise feels ideal for conditioning Champions League footballers, especially when they are sandwiched between two encounters with Barcelona. The only reminders that nothing here is ordinary come upon arriving and leaving. At the entrance to the facility, soldiers carry out checks on every vehicle.

The Shakhtar team bus is among those to have made it inside. “Beyond boundaries” reads the italicised white writing on its side. Nobody can put a number on the hours it has spent shuttling Shakhtar to Poland and back since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. Less than a week earlier, it took them 450 miles from Rzeszow airport after their narrow defeat in Catalonia; in a couple of days it will bring them back there before the return match in Hamburg, where Shakhtar host continental fixtures this season. To earn the riches of a top club, Shakhtar must work harder than anybody.