Ukranian Soccer Fans Get Their Anger At Putin Out During A Soccer Match
by Scott Keyes
Posted on May 19, 2015 at 10:11 am
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“Ukranian Soccer Fans Get Their Anger At Putin Out During A Soccer Match“
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Post-goal pandemonium at Olympic Stadium in Kyiv.
CREDIT: Scott Keyes
KYIV, UKRAINE — In Kyiv, there’s a new four-letter word: “Putin.”
“Putin khuilo!” fans around me shouted frequently and emphatically. “Putin is a dickhead!”
Though no longer a feature of most front pages around the globe, outrage over the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine is omnipresent in the capital city. Last Thursday’s Europa League soccer match was a chance for tens of thousands of Ukrainians to vent their frustrations against a warring neighbor and a world with attention spans too short and diplomatic ties too complex to do much about it.
I shouldn’t have been at the game. I was in Kyiv, and the Ukrainian side looking for its first Europa League (the continental competition, formerly the UEFA Cup) championship, FC Dnipro, usually plays its home games out east in Dnipropetrovsk. Though that city hasn’t seen much unrest, it’s about 200 miles from where MH17 was shot out of the sky last July. Now, European soccer authorities prefer they play “home” games in Kyiv instead.
But following a 1-1 draw on the road against Napoli, an Italian club, the week before, the two sides met at Olympic Stadium in Kyiv amid pouring rain. Dnipro needed a win or 0-0 draw to advance.
It’s difficult to do justice to the energy that pulses through the crowd at European soccer games without resorting to dull metaphors about electricity or the obscenity principle. How can words explain the shrill harp of 70,000 fans expressing hatred for their opponents not by booing, but by whistling? How can dots on a screen carry the tune of the crowd singing songs, some passed down for generations and others created in light of recent conflict, straining for more home field advantage? Add to the mix centuries of war and famine and invasion and toil, instant kinship between a stadium’s worth of brothers and sisters, a chance for a major championship, and oh so much alcohol. It’s no wonder officials kept two sections of the stadium, one on either side of the Napoli fans, empty.
There is a storied history of people using soccer games as venues for political protest under Soviet rule. (Of course, this phenomenon is not restricted to eastern Europe; just ask Barcelona fans during the Franco era.) That tradition lives on today in Ukraine. Those looking to sports as an escape from the conflict would find none at the match.
For as many Dnipro banners as were in the crowd, there were far more Ukrainian flags, many with patriotic slogans that were popular during last year’s Maidan protests like “Glory to Ukraine, Glory to the heroes” or “Ukraine above all” emblazoned atop.
Dnipro fans unfurling a banner in support of a right-wing paramilitary group
CREDIT: Scott Keyes
“Hey hey, who’s not jumping? That person is Putin!” the crowd began chanting a few minutes after the game began. I was in the upper deck, not the area for diehard club supporters. Surely my section was the more relaxed types just there to enjoy the game, I assumed. (Wrongly.) Within five seconds, every single person in my section was on their feet. For the next 90 minutes, by far the most reliable way to get fans up and jumping was for someone to begin this chant, or its cousin, “Hey hey, who’s not jumping? That person is from Moscow!”
Halftime arrived with the score still knotted at 0-0. Popular revolutionary songs like “Hymn of Maidan” and “Pray for Ukraine” blared overhead as fans milled about. I spoke with one fan, Dmitry, about the crowd. He said that things were actually a bit calmer nowadays than they’d been a few months ago. “During the summertime, one person would dress up like Putin in the fan section and people would fake beat him up,” he said.
Like sporting events in the U.S., there was a militaristic overtone as well. The red-and-black Ukrainian Insurgent Army flag was prevalent among Dnipro fans. But the feeling here was less one of pride than of desperation. The war is dragging on, after all, and it’s no secret that allies are not rushing to get militarily involved. Plus the immediate indignity of playing your home games in the stadium of a rival, Dynamo Kyiv. How would Yankees fans take to hosting games in Fenway?
Not long after the second half began, Dnipro launched a counterattack and slotted home the game’s first goal. The crowd went bananas. A rainbow of flares erupted as 70,000-strong roared. The inebriated man sitting to my left gave me a hug strong and sincere enough to make me feel as though I were the goalscorer. Smoke wafted up from the diehard supporters’ section, and by the time the referee resumed play, we could barely see the match through the thick haze.
Shouts of “Glory to Kyivan Rus!” rang out for the rest of the match, a reference to the 9th century kingdom based in Kyiv that encompassed, among other areas, parts of Russia. These exclamations were invariably followed up with “Novorossiya suck dick!” referring to the breakaway region out east whose flag looks uncomfortably similar to the Confederate flag. Billboards plastered around the field asking fans for “Respect” did not have their desired effect. Perhaps if the signs had not been written in English they would have had more of an impact.
When the whistle finally came, scores of fans rushed onto the field, rain and security guards be damned. Players posed for pictures with elated fans. Dnipro defender Artem Fedetskyi dedicated the win to the Ukrainian army. “This victory is for our soldiers, who now defend us, our land,” he said. “Praise them, praise our heroes.” Dnipro’s win means they will move on to face Sevilla in the Europa League championship on May 27th.
We streamed towards the exit. Trios of soldiers, members of the right-wing (and even neo-Nazi) Azov Battalion militia who are fighting on the frontlines against pro-Russian separatists, were standing near the exits. The militia wasn’t an interloper at the game; Dnipro supporters had unfurled a massive Azov tifo banner at halftime, and the battalion’s emblem was plastered on flags and shirts around the stadium. The soldiers held out donation bins asking fans to support the war effort.
They were overflowing.