Marcel Gascon |
Kiev (EFE) Army of your country.
“Since the month of December I have been deployed in Bakhmut,” Andrii Korenivskyi, who runs an online sale of equipment material and joined the army as a volunteer last May.
Korenivskyi, 39 years old and since he was 14 at the bottom where the most radical fans of Dinamo meet, decided to take the step after the Ukrainian Army pushed the invading Russian forces to withdraw from Kiev and its surroundings.
Help from all over Europe
Until then, he had worked as coordinator of the humanitarian and military aid that they received from ultra movements from all over Europe in the “El Córner” pub, where the club’s supporters gather to watch the matches that Dinamo has played behind closed doors since This war started because of the threat of bombing.
Despite having no previous military experience, Korenivskyi quickly learned how to operate drones and took part in aerial intelligence work last fall in the liberation of the southern city of Kherson.
“On the offensive like zombies”
The last three months have been spent in Bakhmut, the city in eastern Ukraine besieged by Russia where the fiercest fighting is taking place.
“Many Russian soldiers are common prisoners who go on the offensive like zombies, stepping over the bodies of their own dead comrades,” Korenivskiy says of what he sees on the front lines, referring to inmates recruited by the Wagner mercenary group. leading the Russian assault on Bakhmut.
Farmer, ultra and soldier
Another Dinamo ultra who has taken up arms for Ukraine is Yaroslav Movchun, a 40-year-old farmer who enlisted in February last year when he saw that Russian forces had come within 10 kilometers of the farm where he lives with his family. between the capital and the city of Zhytomyr.
“At that distance you have less than two hours to escape, and even if you have a weapon at home it is of no use to you,” he says of the circumstances that led him to become a soldier.
From fighter to instructor
After five days of hurried training alongside other Territorial Defense volunteers who hadn’t the faintest idea of using a weapon, Movchun helped stop the Russian Army manning Soviet RPG rocket launchers and UK-supplied NLAW light anti-tank weapons.
After helping to drive the Russian occupiers out of the region, Movchun went on to train other volunteers in the use of these types of weapons, a job he still does.
fallen in combat
Both Korenivskyi and Movchun mourn the death of their teammates who have fallen defending their country on the front lines. The Dinamo ultras Facebook page has gone from posting photos of bengals and tifos to being a succession of obituaries and collections of donations to better equip the Army.
Many Dinamo fans now fighting Russia wear the stylized, calligraphic D of their club crest on their kit.
a national symbol
“Dinamo is a national symbol, it is part of the history of our country and we are proud of it,” says Movchun between the walls decorated with paintings of club legends such as Valeriy Lobanovskyi, Andriy Shevchenko and Serhiy Rebrov of the “El Córner” pub. .
Both Korenivskyi and Movchun long for the days when they could go to the field and travel with the team throughout Europe, and are asking the West for more military aid to achieve as quickly as possible a Ukrainian victory that ends the occupation of their country and the death in the war of his classmates.