Shakhtar Donetsk and Metalist 1925 played out a 0-0 draw in Kyiv's empty Olympic Stadium as competitive football returned to war-torn Ukraine with the start of the country’s new Premier League season.
The opening matches of the campaign have been timed to coincide with Ukraine's Day of the National Flag and provide a further show of resistance following Russia’s February invasion that brought a premature end to last season’s championship.
But it also comes as the US Embassy in the capital warned of the increased possibility of Russian military strikes on Ukraine, and Kyiv banned public celebrations in the capital on the anniversary of independence from Soviet rule on Wednesday.
It was a first competitive fixture in nine months for both teams and, while there were obvious signs of rust, they provided an entertaining contest in which Shakhtar came closest to winning when Mykhailo Mudryk struck the crossbar.
The game was, at least, not interrupted by air-raid sirens, still a daily occurrence.
So tenuous is the situation that only certain venues with bomb shelters will be used for UPL games. No fans are allowed into the stadiums, and many clubs will play their home games not in their own cities, but largely in the safer western or central regions, with fixtures mostly centred around Kyiv for now.
The decision to begin the season reportedly came from President Volodymyr Zelensky himself in order to give the country a morale boost.
The return of the 16-team local league provides a distraction for 90 minutes away from the bloodshed and ravages of a war that Russia calls a 'special operation'.
"This is our job, and we perceive it as a very big responsibility to show the world that life in Ukraine does not stop but continues," Shakhtar’s Croatian coach Igor Jovicevic said ahead of the game.
"Football is one of the factors that gives emotions to the whole country and people who fight for all of us. This is very important for us, not only Shakhtar but also for the entire UPL, to continue life."
His thoughts were echoed by midfielder Mudryk, who added, "They (the watching world) should remember what events are happening in Ukraine, because a lot of time passes and perhaps the world forgets about it.
"Our goal is to use the games to remind the whole world that nothing is over and of the atrocities that are happening here in Ukraine."
Shakhtar skipper Taras Stepanenko said: "For 90 minutes, I forgot about the war. After the first half, I sat in the locker room and thought, 'We have already played 45 minutes, very nice, I didn’t hear the alarm in the city’.
"For 90 minutes, I turned off and just enjoyed playing football, very good emotions, very warm emotions, and I feel proud because of that."
Shakhtar qualified automatically for the group stages of this season's Champions League, having been top of the table when the 2021-22 UPL campaign was suspended. They now await Thursday’s draw (Live on the RTÉ News channel and RTÉ Player) and will play their home games in Poland.
The club had been using their website to give daily updates on the war from Ukraine’s Defence Ministry but can, for now at least, return to the more mundane team news and match reports.
Meanwhile, players from a Mariupol club are hoping to do their devastated city proud after a dramatic escape from their home.
FSC Mariupol are warming up in the tiny village stadium of Demydiv 20 kilometres north of Kyiv - hundreds of kilometres from their base in the strategic port hub on the Sea of Azov.
Oleksandr Yaroshenko, the club's president, said that he motivates the team's players by telling them: "You don't just play football. You have to play because we are Mariupol."
Yaroshenko remembers that the club played a friendly two days before the 24 February invasion.
Nobody at the time believed Russia would attack. Two days later, the first bombs fell on the city and Russian forces surrounded it within days.
When electricity and running water began to be cut off at the beginning of March due to the constant shelling, players and coaches began to converge on the club's base in the city centre.
Yaroshenko, who also owns a medical business, said he volunteered to coordinate medical facilities in the city, which has seen some of the most intense fighting in the past six months of war.
Yaroshenko initially asked the players to leave on a club bus, a big black coach with the inscription 'Mariupol' above the windscreen parked metres from the stadium.
But, not wanting to leave their relatives and fearing they would come under fire along the way, most of the players refused to flee. A week later, the players and their relatives eventually decided to go.
"Our aim was to get out of Mariupol. We were not going to be somewhere together," Yaroshenko said.
But they only managed to get to Berdyansk, a Russia-occupied town, from where everyone dispersed in different directions, including the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula, Georgia and Poland.
FSC Mariupol will be playing in Ukraine's second tier and their first game of the season will be against Lviv club Karpaty in western Ukraine.
The city's main club, FC Mariupol, which is in the Premier League, has been allowed to skip the season with a right to return in the next one.
Premier League rival Desna from the northern city of Chernigiv whose stadium was hit by a Russian rocket, received the same exemption.
Only 10 of FSC Mariupol's players eventually reached their new base in the Kyiv outskirts.
The team was completed with young players from other clubs, including other teams from the war-ravaged Donetsk region.
"Now the most important thing is participation," Yaroshenko said of the club's decision to play the season against all odds.
"We do not know whether the game that has begun will end or not, whether the championship will end or not."
"Today it is more of an ideological team, which is built on the philosophy that this is Mariupol and that we are alive."
