A little more than four months ago, Konstantyn Moskal arrived at a new position close to Ukraine’s frontline. He had been serving in the army for six years and, as a native of the almost entirely occupied Luhansk region, knew the price of war better than most. It was soon to take a horrifying toll from him. Moskal stepped on a landmine shortly after the rotation and life changed irrevocably. The evacuation procedure went smoothly, in the circumstances, but his lower left leg could not be saved. It was hard not to think dark thoughts after two operations; tougher still given a prosthetic was nowhere on the horizon.
Now it is mid-May. Wearing the red, yellow-trimmed shirt of FK Khrestonostsi, Moskal puffs out his cheeks before sitting in the dugout. He props his crutch against the neighbouring seat. The second half of the final is starting and he will take a breather. He smiles at his wife, Alina, who watches from the front row. This time he has remembered to wear his talisman, a metallic cross fastened around his neck, and he tells her it is the reason for his two goals. Soon he will almost certainly win his first football tournament. “Rest up or you won’t be able to lift the trophy,” a teammate advises.
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How can life ever compensate for the loss of something so fundamental? Almost everyone playing here is grappling with that question. The “League of the Mighty”, a competition created by the Ukrainian FA for its amputees, is trying to offer some kind of answer. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine had no more than 10 registered amputee footballers. Now there are 170, which is about 15% of Europe’s total. Estimates suggest as many as 50,000 people have lost limbs owing to the war.
Moskal’s second surgery took place in Lutsk, in the country’s north-west. On another of those long, exacting days at the rehabilitation centre, he saw an advert on social media: Khrestonostsi (Crusaders) had formed there at the end of December and sought new recruits. He had previously been more into boxing, but a return to physical activity could not come quickly enough. If those around him were surprised, they knew not to suggest it was too soon. Within days Ihor Lytvynenko, a former Paralympian footballer who had been appointed the new club’s coach, drove to the centre and picked him up for training.
“I don’t think he would feel the same comfort anywhere else that he does among this group,” says Lytvynenko, a kindly and soft-spoken figure. “This is all about a community: guys with similar issues who come together and support each other.”
Eight teams are competing here in a tidy little ground close to the national stadium. The two-day tournament’s first edition was held in January. There are five in the Super League and a further three newcomers, including Khrestonostsi, playing for the First League trophy. Potential future competitors have been invited to take part in demonstrations and the expectation is that a fully fledged national league will begin later this year.
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“It’s about emotional gain, helping them rediscover this will to live,” says Bohdan Melnyk, the event’s development manager. “In some cases they’re now doing something they weren’t able to before their injuries. The key thing is that we don’t kick anyone out of a team. If you want to play, come to training and let’s do it. Everyone can try, we’ll always encourage each other.”
Melnyk is speaking before the team he founded, Pokrova, take the field for a Super League match against Dnipro. Based in Lviv, Pokrova started out in September 2023 and have set a standard for the ecosystem Ukraine’s football authorities are creating. They were quickly accepted into Poland’s amputee Ekstraklasa league and are able to bring two teams here, along with support staff and a small group of supporters who chant to a drumbeat.
Players come from as far as Odesa and Mykolaiv, 11 hours away by car, to represent Pokrova. Their expenses are paid. Everyone has their own tale of service, loss and hope. David, a Colombian soldier, travelled from his home city Barranquilla to fight for Ukraine. He lost a leg when a mine exploded near Kharkiv; now he plays for their second team and sits among them watching other games unfold. The jokes and repartee flow; he keeps up as best he can, for someone who barely speaks Ukrainian or English, and takes his turn on the drum. Football offers some level of certainty in what would otherwise be a strange and isolated existence.
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Then there is the bearded Andriy Mandryk, who Melnyk views as a shining example of what amputee football can achieve. Mandryk went through 25 surgical interventions after being injured near the front, eventually requiring a leg amputation. “He was in a really sad state and we invited him to training,” Melnyk says.
“He came and could barely walk on crutches: he brought his three-year-old daughter and was scared of falling, especially in front of her. Then I took the ball, kicked it towards the little girl and told her to pass it to her father. They started to play between themselves, and that’s how I first saw him smile after his injury. Now he’s the soul of the party and a totally different person.”
Standing outside Pokrova’s dressing room, Mandryk calmly recounts how an Iskander rocket attack led to his appalling ordeal. He had been a goalkeeper in the same futsal team as Melnyk before becoming an army captain. “In the beginning it was hard but I’m almost there physically as a player,” says the 25-year-old Mandryk. “This is such an important rehabilitation for veterans. Without this kind of activity it’s not hard to start drinking or doing drugs.”
Shakhtar Donetsk are here too, in the form of their well-developed Shakhtar Stalevi side. One of their players, Andriy Herasymchuk, was injured close to Kherson in October 2022. He had rarely played football before but is now a pillar of the side and training to be a referee. “Life is movement,” he says. “You need to move in order to stay alive. I’m just trying to do that.”
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There is no lack of activity on the pitch, which is scaled down to roughly two-thirds its regular size and provides the stage for two seven-a-side teams. This is a sport dependent on upper body strength: the ability to propel yourself, using a specially adapted support, around the surface and generate enough backlift to circulate the ball or shoot. The players’ impairments do not diminish their ingenuity and sheer skill, whether manifested in passing patterns, intuitive flicks, swift breaks or shot placement. One flicked finish in Pokrova’s win over Shakhtar brings the house down. Because this is present-day Ukraine, the subsequent break is prolonged by an air raid siren.
Knocks and calls for treatment are common. Residual limb pain, affecting the remaining part of a leg or arm, can be agonising and blows to those regions are keenly felt given prosthetics are not worn. It is hard to get through a 50-minute game. Moskal has been struggling with such an issue from training and takes assistance from a colleague in applying freezing spray midway through Khrestonostsi’s opening match against Vinnytsia. His teammate, Vova, takes a nasty looking fall during the game.“Suka!” (“Bitch!”) exclaims Vova’s wife, Marina. “Don’t swear, this is going out on YouTube,” comes a voice from behind.
The entire weekend is a slick production, VAR even being deployed to resolve penalty calls on a couple of occasions. Nobody hoped Ukraine would need to develop an advanced amputee football infrastructure but, now that the need is here and will only grow, the model being constructed looks serious, detailed and inclusive. Women are being integrated, a handful turning out for the Kyiv side Burevi.
Moskal, a dynamic presence on the right flank, returns for a cameo towards the end of the final. There is to be no hat-trick but Khrestonostsi have done more than enough, overcoming the Kharkiv-Dnipro side Nezlamni 3-0 and taking a prize that, for numerous reasons, nobody in the team could have envisaged winning. “I’m incredibly proud of my boys, they gave it everything,” says a visibly emotional Lytvynenko. “We’d never played on a big pitch, or on grass, before. The kits and boots weren’t worn in. It’s all new for us.”
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Khrestonostsi warm down and return to watch Pokrova win the Super League by comprehensively beating Shakhtar. As the minutes tick away, the stadium comes to its feet for a rendition of the national anthem. When the final whistle blows, flares light up in the stand. One wonders how and when these men will be able to fully reckon with the drastic change, the crushing deprivations and the colourful new possibilities they have been dealt.
Standing on the winners’ podium at last, an exhausted Moskal holds up Khrestonostsi’s flag. He grins broadly, shyly, and receives his medal, handing it to Alina with a kiss after alighting. Victory means the team will receive a special reception with the mayor of Lutsk. In the coming days, Alina will join Moskal there and the pair will set up home for good. Plans will be made for a new life that already holds clear promise.
“I need to recuperate and then we’ll see what’s next,” Moskal says afterwards. “It makes sense to feel happy, alive and celebrate moments like this. But at the same time, we must remember that we’re able to do it because of the guys who are out there, fighting for us.” Like everyone here, he has known both sides of a redemptive story whose complexities will endure.
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