Trials of normality in the Republic of Donbass, where we begin to live even with the ball. The championship is rebuilt with professional and semi-professional players. But it's all suspended in a limbo, poised between the will to live and the reason of state.
From the 2014 on, everything has changed. There Prem'er-Liha, the Ukrainian A series, has adapted to politics by mixing names of things and cities.
Football here is daily bread: we are in Europe also for this ... There is not a single boy in the Shcherbakova Park who does not know the Italian league teams by heart. But there is a thin line that divides typhus, homelands and consciences. Once upon a time in Donetsk the Ukraine derby was played: the rivalry between the Šachtar and the Kiev Dynamo was proverbial. Now the Šachtar plays in Lviv, waiting for nothing to change.
The years pass and with them the beautiful and brutal passions that they carry inside. In the 2012 the Donbass Donbass Arena was home to the matches of the European football championships. When the war started the stadium was damaged. In these hours the games are played in France and Ukraine, already eliminated, has become the team of the "others": the country is one, but the homelands are two and behind the flags beats the heart of passion. Even that of the ball.
The political earthquake has moved all the flags, including those of the curves. It does not only apply to Donetsk, but to all of eastern Ukraine. Just look south to understand: in the 2014, Crimea has returned to Russia. In the same year the PFK Sevastopol and the Tavrija of Sinferopoli applied to UEFA to be admitted to the Moscow championship.
Meanwhile, life continues. While we enjoy the coolness of the eastern continental sky in the park's pond, some kids take a bath. Then they dry around an improvised fire. They laugh, play, cackle. Withdrawn, two boyfriends kiss; a little further on a flower stall. Everything is normal, everything has slowed down.
Everyday life in Donetsk is a sweet music box like the homemade lollipops that are sold in the park. It is a damp picture of summer downpours and endemic humility. The summer park looks like an impressionist canvas, painted at times thick and gentle together.
On one side of the Shcherbakova Park, a few tens of meters from the lake, there is the Šachtar Stadium, the second stadium in Donetsk. We are witnessing Vostok-Oplot, two teams with battalion names. Soldiers, wives of players, some photographers ... this is the public. The war is there, but you can't hear it. Everything moves while remaining still, like the cold water of the lake.
We spent the night in the Petrovs'kyi district, at 2 km from the front. Paul, a boy of 25 years that guides us, tells us about City fallen around long ago, leaving homes unharmed.
A little further on from the mounds of earth surrounding a mine, there are yellow-blue flags. Right here the border passes and the front between Ukraine and DNR. For now you can't go any further.
A lady collects fruit from an abandoned vegetable garden with her husband. Mosquitoes above the 30 grades give no respite. Still children cackling and diving into the water of Shcherbakova Park.
Pass a Ural with a rough roar loaded with soldiers and shakes the leaves of a lime tree. With the flowers of these trees that are everywhere you get a very good tea that everyone drinks.
(photo: Giorgio Bianchi)
