This Monday, Ukraine will play its first Euro 2024 match against Romania. In this context, a fragment of the stands of the Solnechny stadium in Kharkov, destroyed by bombing, is exhibited in Munich.
2004 Ballon d’Or winner and President of the Ukrainian Federation Andriy Shevchenko was present at the opening of this platform in front of several hundred supporters of the Ukrainian selection. It has been temporarily installed in the central square of the Bavarian capital, Kyiv’s sister city, since 1989.
Thus, at the foot of the statue of Maximilian I, a stand of blue and yellow seats, the colors of Ukraine, was exposed, torn and carried by a piece of mesh from the Solnechny stadium in Kharkov, in the northeast of the country. Duke of Bavaria in Munich.
This 5,000-seat stadium was built in 2011 as a training ground for Euro 2012. During the bombing of Kharkov it was destroyed and has been unusable since May 2022.
On the occasion of Euro 2024 in Germany, the aim of the exhibition for the organizers is to highlight the destruction of the country’s sports facilities since the start of the war in Ukraine by Russia on February 24, 2022. “It means a lot to me to be here,” Andriy Shevchenko replied. “Today we start our tournament with a team on the field, but millions of soldiers defending Ukraine. We are all together”.
77 stadiums destroyed
The Football Federation of Ukraine recalls that since the beginning of the conflict, 77 stadiums have been destroyed on Ukrainian soil. In addition, Russian bombing damaged more than 500 sports facilities, forcing many Ukrainian athletes to train outside their country, particularly in preparation for the Olympic Games in Paris (July 26–August 11).
This fragment of the demolished stand will then be on display in Düsseldorf (in the west) from Friday, where Ukraine take on Slovakia in the second match of the first round, and then in Stuttgart on June 26 before the match against Belgium.
Source: Le Parisien
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