To your respect - a sheet of Andriy Shevchenko, under which Ukrainian leather is signed.

The greatest gravestone in the history of Ukrainian football, the hero of the Golden Ball-2004 rock, Andriy Shevchenko, having written a great sheet to the luminous enormity, in which he spoke about Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Everything is here: emotions, feelings, think, anger, and at once, it’s hot to show the world the truth. The truth about those who really lie in our country.

Up to your respect - a translation of the text of our legend, published on The Players Tribune. Deyakі words, thoughts and speeches and truths hoot to goosebumps.

Spirit of Ukraine I fell asleep when the phone rang. Tse bula my mother. I marveled at the anniversary.

Bula 3:30 am.

If your mother calls you at the right time, the chances for those that will be radio will not be great, really?

I think that at that moment, if I rang the phone, part of me already knew. I will never forget the date: February 24, 2022. Sprats of the tyzhniv mustache were boasting, but none of the normal people wanted to believe in those that could have happened. And if I'm waking up the phone from my mother's names, I'm all sensible.

Vaughn was crying, if she told me, that she thought, like її budinok was shaking in the vibes.

We turned on the news, and the axis is out. Viyna. In Ukraine.

Nevermind for an hour.

I felt so helpless.

I felt guilty.

I mav buti there in Kiev with my mother. For a few days before this bov її is the day of the people, and we were chosen to rule the family supper in it, together with my sister and a lot of friends. I booked flights from the 19th to the 29th, and through the same documents, as I happened to work in the UK, I changed my flight for the 26th.

A couple of years later, my mothers began to find videos from friends and in social networks. Russian helicopters over our land, rockets on our roads, bridges and airports, majestic traffic jams of people, like ticking from Kiev. In one day, thousands of people, who spent all their lives in Ukraine, became refugees.

Shock. I have four children. I didn’t bug out until the end - to reveal, how. To my young vіsіm rokіv. How to explain to you what you see?

I don’t know for sure how many times I had to charge my phone. This whole day I called people: friends, homeland, many colleagues and teammates.

Chi safe stench? And how good are their homelands? What will be given? Chi can I help you?

You panic at this hour, so that the songs of the decision can change the life of a person.

I remember, at some point I just died. I turned to the squad and said: “I don’t know what to work…”.

My first bajans had to take my family from the country, but my mother and sister told me the same - I remember the words of my mothers so clearly on the phone: " Tse my dim"

Tієї nights mi bachili, like President Zelenskyy nadіslav read the message to people. Vіn having told us that you will not leave Kiev, that it is my duty to defend your land at once. Tse Bulo our future. Tse buv vibіr mizh tim - bude our country chi nі.

At such a moment, your plans for the future, your priorities, your whole world is changing.

What is so successful? Tse victory at the football match? Tse League of Champions? Earn pennies? good business?

Really - nothing at all.

Other problems, other problems, all things.

Everything else falls.

Success is freedom. Success - life.

In the coming days, everything started a little bit of history.

Not only a lot of people were deprived of surpluses, but other people turned around without a wagon to protect our land. The stench didn’t hesitate to think about the legacy, the stink just knew what they needed to go.

I felt about the lads of twenty years, for years the self-taught defended the roads, for it was necessary to protect their village from the garbniks.

I’m talking about people who were like beggars in collapsed buddіvl, to those who had to help evacuate their susіdіv.

I’m thinking about a person that squad, insulting doctors, they went to Irpin to help in the liquor, if bombs were falling on the spot. The stinkers have deprived their friends of information: "

You can show yourself that it is similar?

Friendship of a few days was lost in the likarni, until the place was ice-bound with the earth, helping people. Zreshtoy stench turned to their children, but they put everything at stake in order to help their country.

I know styles of such stories. History of heroes.

I feel a story about a nameless masculinity, about a nameless life and suffering. My titonka was sitting at her basement for days and a half hour of bombardment. Vaughn could have flown to my mami less than once, if the Russians were on a pivdnya. I have close friends, they died. That middle of the chaos we did not have an hour to sumuvat.

I'm still guilty. I want to be there to improve the situation, defend my land and win my family. I needed help.

Once I said to my mother: "

Ale, you’ll say to me: “Andriy, why are you working here? You are not a soldier. You are guilty of staying there, de contagion"

" Tell them the truth about those who are. Tsya war is not only on the ground, I will drop it with bombs. Price information. You can sing your name, your connections. Pick up koshti. Take away the support. Can you help me to call more, anizh zvіdsi"

I listened to my mother and tried to rob it so that it was written by me. In the coming days, I have reported my susil, to help those who are in the moment.

It's marvelous bulo bachiti, like people in our world to shy away. Democratic world united.

I got a call from the rest of the world - from Italy, USA, Germany, zvіdusіl. People from the rest of the world, how to sway a mustache, to take a penny, to send additional help, or just to connect people in the missions, to change their ways, so that their friends of that homeland are safe.

We phoned one to one, for example: \?

So many people asked for services.

Nothing at all without saying anything.

People in Ukraine know what it means to be free, to that which we created this country at once.

Our new country with an old history. Our culture, language and history are trying to destroy the earth, but independence has been taken away from us for more than 30 years. Through this - especially the people of my generation - we can see that Ukraine grew together with us. This link means that I don’t want to take yoga.

My history is the whole history of Ukraine.

For a decade of rock before the vote of Independence, I died in Kiev, in childhood, leather weekend, I traveled by city to play football. From nine years ago I traveled by bus and subway tudy, de mav bi grati. The geography of the place I found out for him, de bule football fields.

I have a history for the skin condition of the current history of Ukraine. If there was a Chornobyl disaster and we were evacuated from Kiev, I remember how my tato took a Geiger's lichchik to one of my football balls, and showed wine at 50 times more than the norm - then I happened to yoga!

If you come across Independence in 1991, I’ll take part in a tournament with the Dynamo Kiev Academy near Moscow for about a month. Today I marvel at the news in our hotel... Gorbachev, Yeltsin, hang up this mess. Tsya false reality of the collapse of the SRSR. If we were driven home by the pull, we were still a part of the Radyansk Union. Ale if we went to the platform near Kiev? We arrived in an independent state!

I remember the ensign. Everywhere blue and yellow. Everyone was so happy.

I see your own emotions, if I put on a T-shirt of the national selection for the first time of the national election until 16 years, Ukraine - the Netherlands 2: 2 near Lviv, on Zakhodі krai.

If you don't know, I'll tell you that football is an important part of the life of Ukrainians. Tse sport number 1. I believe, adoring such legends of Dynamo, like Oleg Blokhin and Igor Belanov - the miraculous Volodar of the Golden Ball, - but my generation united people in a different way. Gra is small for us otherwise. We created more, lower football. It was about national identity.

It is important to bring out the atmosphere, like a panuvala at Lviv's Tієї nights. Stadium buv povniy. Thousands of people came to marvel at the group of youth! The stench has come to play a group of your teams in Ukrainian colors and feel the Ukrainian language in the stands. Those nights people came to marvel at the Ukrainian team, not the Radian team.

If I completed my career as a captain, after EURO-2012, we felt great pride for those who can build us as a nation. We went through a long way. We worked hard to encourage the stadiums, as well as improve the quality of life, our hospitality, so that guests from the USSR of Europe could indulge our country and fall in love with us, like me. Just like we were voted by spivorganizers, I dreamed of winning at this tournament. If it happened, I could be 36, I was physically suffering from back pain... but I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

This was a miracle summer and a significant moment for us as a nation.

Just 10 years after Euro 2012, Russia invaded. First of all, it’s clear that we can spend everything that we worked so hard on. Our collective history.

We know what we cannot allow.

More less fire on our territory.

We can say that we are still here. Deyaki people turn home. Football season. We are fighting for a normal life.

Don't quit yet. Not an hour to change the channel. 24 fierce we didn’t have an hour to think, think, we’ll be shocked. Ale, at once, everything is clear, everything is reasonable. Bіl ta spend є at all. She can't look at problems.

Tse mozhe be de. Cost of skin. This fight is not only for Ukraine, but for all democracy, for the whole world.

It’s possible, you read it, thinking, you’re safe, that Ukraine is far away here, you can’t get stuck out there. Possibly, but recently a lot of people in Ukraine thought so. The truth lies in the fact that the world does not work in such a rank. Tse mozhe vіdbuvatsya anew and anew, even though we don’t own lessons and we don’t get together.

I already turned back home as part of a partnership with the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation and the initiative of President Zelensky United24. I bachiv ninishnyu reality.

The first time, when I turned back to Kiev, at the kvіtnі, I arrived with a pull from Poland.

Silence is the first thing that opposes.

I don’t know who traveled and if ever on a train in Ukraine. Make it loud there. Check out the carriages, call the families, see the children who run along the aisles.

Now it's all up and running. Quietly, empty cars, empty faces, on which you can’t see the emotions of the day. We entered the combat zone.

On the platform of the railway station, I shook the soldiers, as if they were hanging in black and coined their sim's. Mothers, squads and children cried in arms. Sims resurrected after months of separation.

Since then I have spent years walking with a friend along the streets of Kiev. I wanted to pamper the place of my childishness, change my mind, what a stink to stand, hug people, see their emotions.

This is my place, with which I got to know, rising in price in the subway in childhood. I have a story about a skin kutochok, or I can tell. Ale at once everything is done. I can't believe it, how few cars are on the streets. The only right noise was the alarm siren - six or seven times a day. First time, if you can feel it, it's really shocking.

We drove the father’s car for the place, passed the checkpoints, and went to see the area, de I virus, schools, as I know, fields, on some gravel.

If you bachish the place of your childishness, smashed by rockets and blasted by the fire of life, then it will undoubtedly enter into your heart.

Far beyond Kiev, more rubbish.

At another arrival, I sipped Irpin. Tse if the garne is a place, there are no Novobuds... now there is simply nothing.

Chornii.

flattening.

Zruynovany.

I went to Borodianka, Bucha, Gostomel, there the same.

Tse those who are guilty of pampering your eyes. Not a movie. Tse real life.

Dali at the Dnipro I zaishov from children in medical care and treated boys and girls of six or seven years with terrible injuries.

I feel like talking about bombs, they sent them to their houses - now there are no hands, no, motherland. I'm moving from one stone to another, and more, and more.

Seemingly honestly, after another kіmnati I don't want to continue. I don't see any more. Tse bulo too much, too much too much hurt that bag.

Tse war.

I for what? I can't know the reason. I can’t explain the value to my children, nor be a sensible person.

People turn around to repair and restore their houses, but the situation is critical.

So many families live in overpopulated timchasovyh huts without access to basic services. And soon winter.

It is necessary for us to continue the collection of money and donations for support of those who are still living in the country, and those who have become a migrant. And we need to continue to tell the truth about those who are.

Now this is my priority.

My work with Laureus at least included a visit to the program for refugees in Warsaw, Ukrainian children, who spent a house and loved ones, and how hundreds of kilometers went up in price, to know the shelter and safety, victorious sports, to try to overcome psychological trauma.

I also worked with other top athletes, as they help to improve on the right. I got to know Igoa Shvyontek at the exhibition match for the collection of coins for Ukrainian refugees near Krakow. I gave Robert Lewandowski - one of the first athletes, who fought against Russia - the captain's armband of Ukrainian colors, so that he won the wine from me to the championship of the world.

The world of sports can be inspired by thoughts and inspire politics, if there are wars on the right. Tse guess me, what is in the hour, maybe, more, lower, be-if, sports can really change the world.

I'm still an optimist. I'm running light in the Kintz Tunnel. I'm making progress. I'm working on my future lands. I'm doing it right.

This war has changed us, but I know that it has not changed what we value the most.

This is our land, our freedom and our future.

We live to continue writing our collective history at once.

At the end, I want to tell you more about those who spent the first hour of my visit to Irpin.

If the city has a beautiful new football stadium, as well as a new academy with piece fields. After the bombardment, only one field was left short.

I spoke with measure about the initiative for the collection of koshtiv for the renewal of watering, but in spite of the stench, the stench is filled with new craters, ulamkiv and splinters.

No matter what, I still had a group of children, no older than 12 years old, who played ball at the same time.

These children will never have the chance to experience those that the stinks have experienced, but to grow in such minds. Not a place for children.

Ale stink all the same.

Still fixing opir.

Tse for me the spirit of Ukraine.