Dinamo Kyiv

Many years ago, after reading Eduardo Galeano’s classic El fútbol a sol y sombra (Soccer in Sun and Shadow), I ordered a football jersey from Kyiv’s football club because I learned of this incident (translated by Mark Fried, © 2013):

…A monument in Ukraine commemorates the players of the 1942 Dinamo Kyiv team. During the Nazi occupation they committed the insane act of defeating Hitler’s squad in the local stadium. Having been warned, “If you win, you die,” they started out resigned to losing, trembling with fear and hunger, but in the end they could not contain their yearning for dignity. When the match was over, all eleven were shot with their club shirts on at the edge of a cliff.

If you are a football fan, that is all you need to know to understand the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion and to see through Putin’s lies about “de-nazification”.