Croatian ex-soccer player Piric wins plaudits by helping Ukrainian kids
In a school gym in government-held territory several hundred kilometers from where pro-Russian rebels have been battling Kyiv’s troops for 19 months, the 38-year-old former defender swapped news with dozens of school pupils.
They were among the hundreds that Piric — now a soccer agent — has helped send to Croatia to get away from the crisis in their homeland and relax on the Adriatic coast.
“I spent lots of time in Ukraine, I played here and Ukraine gave me and my family very much,” Piric, who played for the Arsenal Kyiv, told AFP.
Over the summer Piric organized for roughly 300 children — some who fled the conflict and others the offspring of injured soldiers — to have a two-week break in the Croatian coastal town of Split.
“Every morning we went to the beach and in the evening we played football,” said Georgiy Moskalenko, 12, whose family left the rebel-held city Gorlivka around 18 months ago.
“Everything was brilliant,” chimed in Oleksandr Rudenko, 15, whose policeman father fought on the frontline.
Memories of War
For Piric there is a deeper reason why he felt drawn to help — the plight of the children stirred memories of the war that rocked his own homeland in the early 1990s.