“If it wasn’t for my daughter, I would be fighting in the Ukraine”

The Ukrainian footballer of Manchester City Oleksandr Zinchenko has recognized that if it were not for his daughter he would be fighting with his compatriots against the Russian invasion, and has assured that “they prefer to die and will die” rather than surrender, in addition to explaining that their mission is to “show the rest of the world what’s going on”.

“I’ll be honest: if it wasn’t for my daughter and my family, I would be there. I am very proud to be Ukrainian, and I will be for the rest of my life. And when you are seeing people, how they are fighting for their lives… there are no words. I know the people of my country, their mentality, they prefer to die and they will die,” he told BBC Sport.

In addition, he confessed that it is impossible for him to forget the pain suffered by the Ukrainians, many condemned to live in bunkers due to the Russian attacks. “I just cry. It’s been a week (since the start), but sometimes I’m even driving to the training ground and I start crying.. Imagine that the place where you were born, where you grew up, is now an empty piece of land… “, she stressed.

“We have to stop the war. I talked to many people who are on our side and they say that the way Russian television shows us is ridiculous.. My mission is to show the rest of the world what is happening right now. There are cities in the eastern part of Ukraine where the civilians, the Russians, make fake protests asking to ‘stand with Russia’ and things like that. I can show a million videos of what they are doing now. I can show all the cities in my country that they destroyed,” she explained.

Finally, he was “very grateful” for all the love he is receiving on the field and off it. “I am very grateful to all these people for the support I am receiving. I get a lot of messages from a lot of guys in Ukraine and they ask me about the support videos; that shows that people are watching television, football, and I guess it helps them a lot,” he concluded.