Top Ukrainian athletes also take part in the fight against the Russian army.
Former Bundesliga player Igor Belanov, the 1986 European Footballer of the Year, registered with the local defense forces of his hometown of Odessa, Ukrainian media reports said on Thursday.
The 61-year-old Belanow showed up with an assault rifle in a position secured with sandbags in the southern Ukrainian port city.
Odessa is considered a target for Russian forces to cut off Ukraine's access to the sea.
At the beginning of March, the former Borussia Mönchengladbach and Eintracht Braunschweig striker had already campaigned for an end to the war.
"I beg you to stop the bloodshed of our people immediately!" he wrote on Facebook.
Ukrainian cities turned into ruins.
"Our grandfathers and fathers didn't build them for fighting, but for happy people to live there!" he wrote more than a month ago.
Belanov began his career with teams in Odessa and later played for capital city club Dynamo Kyiv.
In the final of the European Championship in 1988 he lost with the Soviet Union against the Netherlands (0:2) and missed a penalty.
In 1989 he was the first Soviet international to switch to the Bundesliga.
After a year and a half in Mönchengladbach, he played for the second division club Eintracht Braunschweig from 1991.
Other top Ukrainian athletes also fight in the army.
The biathlete Dmytro Pidrutschnji made a prominent appearance.
The former captain of the national soccer team and former Bayern professional Anatoly Tymoshchuk, on the other hand, was banned for life by his home country – after the war began, he refused to give up his job as assistant coach at top Russian club Zenit St. Petersburg and also did not speak out against the war .