A break on the battlefield to cheer on the Ukraine national football team at the 2024 European Championship

They won one battle, then went to watch another. Eight Ukrainian National Guard soldiers who helped stop a Russian offensive in Ukraine’s northern Kharkiv region took an afternoon off Monday to watch the men’s national soccer team play its first match of the European Championship.

“Football unites – it gives adrenaline and motivates,” said Evhen, 34, a soldier with the 13th National Guard Brigade who asked to be identified only by his first name in accordance with military protocol.

The soldiers huddled in a bunker with soft drinks and chips to watch Ukraine play Romania in Munich, only to be heartbroken when their team lost 3-0. But like most Ukrainians, they are very proud of their sports team during the war.

“We have one team on the field and a million in front,” said Andriy Shevchenko, a former soccer star who is Ukraine’s most famous player and now heads the national soccer federation. Like all Ukrainians, he said, “football players start their day by opening their phones and checking the situation on the battlefield.”

For the National Guard soldiers, who have been fighting together for more than a year, football became a chance to meet in the safety of a basement and cheer on their national team. Huddled underground, they watched as Ukraine quickly fell behind Romania.

“In war we look at things differently,” says a commander who uses the nickname Jackson. “Even now, as we watch the game, we understand that we can leave at any moment and have to go into the trenches and fight. We are always ready.”

Football, he said, is important for Ukrainians, even during war. “I have no doubt,” he said of people who support footballers along with the army during wartime. “We fight and play for our country.”

When Russia launched a cross-border attack north of Kharkiv last month, opening a new front in the war, Ukrainian soldiers halted the advance within about 10 days. In an area where fighting took place in the city, in the city of Vovchansk, they also pushed back Russian troops from their leading positions.

With the football competitions all but hopelessly disrupted by war and occupation, Ukraine barely qualified for this tournament. They had to beat Iceland in the play-offs on March 26 just to get in. That match was played in Wroclaw, Poland, because Ukraine cannot host matches on its own soil on March 26 due to the threat of Russian missiles.

Ukraine has also not had any home games since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. Since then, professional footballers who joined the army have been killed, along with countless football fans. Numerous football fields and other sports training facilities have also been destroyed by the war.

The Sonyachny football stadium, which was shelled in May 2022, was badly damaged. While it was occupied for a month at the beginning of the war, the football field in Borodianka, north of the capital Kiev, was destroyed by Russian soldiers who dug a trench in the shape of a huge “V” across the entire field. Russian soldiers mark the letters “V” and “Z” on their tanks.

Oleksandr Tymchyk, who played in Monday’s match against Romania, lost a brother when he was killed in action in the Donetsk region in August 2023.

Since February 2022, FIFA, football’s global governing body, and UEFA, the European governing body, have imposed bans on all Russian clubs and national teams.

Monday’s match started Ukraine’s fourth participation in the European Championship. The first time, in 2012, Ukraine co-hosted the tournament along with Poland, which hosted several matches in the city of Donetsk, two years before Russia occupied the city.

But this year, most of the nearly one million men in Ukraine’s army, National Guard, paramilitary police and other units could not watch. Some at the front watched on screens connected to batteries and satellite internet connections that were also used to transmit artillery coordinates and other military data.

Unlike civilians who play the game, soldiers are not allowed to drink.

“Beer is really missing here,” Evhen noted. He said he missed his circle of football fan friends back home. “But I also have a really good team of friends here,” he added. “These are great guys.”

Ukraine hopes to use the tournament to draw international attention to the country’s plight, including that of its sports facilities.

Kharkiv is the region where the largest number of sports facilities were destroyed in the war. And ahead of Ukraine’s match in Munich on Monday, the national federation, the Football Union of Ukraine, displayed part of the badly damaged stand of the Sonyachny Stadium on the city’s Wittelsbacherplatz square.

Members of the Ukrainian national team also recorded a video showing rocket damage to each of their hometowns. Some come from occupied Donetsk and the surrounding area. The midfielder Mykola Shaparenko comes from Velyka Novosilka in the Donetsk region, which is under Ukrainian control but was destroyed in the war.

Ukrainian sports news media and bars are also using the tournament’s momentum to raise donations for the military. The Beer Pub Kutovy in Kiev announced an auction of footballer Nazar Voloshyn’s T-shirt to raise money for the Third Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Ukraine plays its next match on Friday, against Slovakia. Teams play three matches in a group stage to determine who will advance to the knockout rounds. This means that Ukraine still has a chance of victory.

The soldiers mourned the team’s loss to Romania.

“Well, we’re all angry,” said Evhen, the soldier from the 13th National Guard Brigade. “But it’s good that no one’s life depends on this match.”

Still, they joked, they had plenty of opportunities to vent their frustrations.

“We’re going to take a rest with the boys and then fire mortars until victory, to let off some steam this way,” said Jackson, the commander.