Shakhtar Donetsk have evacuated their Brazilian players to Romania following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Shakhtar, with the help of UEFA, got their Brazilian contingent out of the country, and confirmed that Dynamo Kiev and SK Dnipro-1 have also evacuated foreign players as the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues.
The evacuation comes after Shakhtar’s Marlon Santos described the desperate situation they were going through in Ukraine.
‘There’s no fuel, the border is closed, the airspace is closed. There’s no way for us to get out,’ Marlon said on Instagram via the New York Post. ‘We are really desperate. We are going through chaos.’
‘The desperation is agonising. We wait for the support from our country. We speak in the name of all the Brazilians in Ukraine.’
Shakhtar said in a statement: “We want to thank for the assistance everyone who took part in this process.
“The evacuation of the players was made possible thanks to the personal assistance of Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin, the Ukrainian Football Association President Andrii Pavelko and the Moldovan Football Federation President Leonid Oleinichenko.”
Shakhtar are top of the Ukrainian Premier League but the league is suspended with the table-toppers not playing a league match since 11 December when they beat Oleksandria.
