It has been 255 days without football and under Russian bombs.

Just 12 hours before the six-month anniversary of the Kremlin-ordered invasion of Ukraine and as Flag Day was being celebrated, the ball was rolling again in a stadium.

Shakhtar and Metalist 1925

jumped onto the lawn of the Kiev Olympic to play the first game of the Premier League in conditions far from normal, but with the sporting and government objective of sending a signal to the world of the nation's resistance.

The country's president,

Volodimir Zelensky

, addressed the players, all dressed in the national flag.

Subsequently, a minute of silence was observed and an army soldier made the kick-off, all surrounded by an overwhelming silence.

With more than 5,000 deaths, millions of exiles spread across Europe and cities destroyed, the Ukrainian Football Association and the Government agreed last July to return the competition "because of the power it has to help people think about the future and erase shadows from the mind," the president,

Andriy Pavelko

, told the Associated Press at the time.

The return of a championship that was suspended last February has occurred at a time of maximum tension after the murder of the daughter of the Russian ideologue

Aleksander Dugin

, for which the security measures were extreme.

There will be no public in the stands and the matches will have to be played in four unique venues: (

Kiev, Kovalivka, Lviv and Uzhhorod

).

The capital and the western regions, farthest from the Russian border, are the safest, and teams will be concentrated there to avoid excessive travel due to the country's battered infrastructure.

But the precautions include that

500 meters from the eight chosen stadiums there will have to be an anti-aircraft bunker

where players, referees, the media and State security can take refuge.

The surveillance of the airspace above the stadium will be constant.

If an aerial attack occurs, a speaker will alert over the loudspeaker

and the referee will immediately suspend the match.

TWO TEAMS CANNOT PARTICIPATE

Nobody considered the possibility of resuming a competition that was last played on December 12 in Canada or Italy, two countries that offered to host the Ukrainian clubs, of which two cannot participate.

Among the 16 that have started the championship are neither

Mariupol

nor

Desna of Chernogov

, both located in areas of Russian rule and with the facilities totally destroyed.

His place will be taken by

Metalist Kharkiv

and

Kryvbas , the team in which the Spanish

Jorge López

was the sports director

until the outbreak of the war.

The other big change is the scarce presence of foreign soccer players.

UEFA allowed them to leave the country and could sign with other teams.

Few resisted.

Three Argentines appear in the resumption.

In

Dnipro

,

Domingo Blanco and Emiliano Purita

will do it and in

Rukh Lviv

,

Fabricio Alvarenga

, who did not leave the country with the war.

The Croatians Neven Durasek and Igor Jovicevic and the Burkinabe Lassina Traoré are the foreign faces of Shakhtar

, who has lost his Brazilian clan.

Donestk, in the Donbás region, has been one of the most affected cities.

"We will be a team with hungry Ukrainian players. It's time to survive, be a family and do something nice for our people," said Croatian Dario Srna, his technical secretary.

With the calendar defined, the duel of maximum rivalry between Dinamo Kiev and Shakhtar will be played on the seventh day and, like the entire championship, it can be seen on the Irish online channel

Setanta Sports

, which has bought the broadcasting rights of this football that wants to be therapy against bombs.

Of course, the schedules and venues of the matches of the following days are not even known due to security-related issues.

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