MONACO — Ukraine is taking its war effort from the muddy Donbas trenches and halls of European power to an iconic London football stadium this week.
Originally driven from its home in 2014 by marauding Russian-backed forces, Shakhtar Donetsk — Ukraine’s top team — will take up a residency at Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea FC, in Europe’s premier football competition Wednesday night.
As air raid sirens sounded relentlessly back home, the club’s Chief Executive Sergei Palkin and Sporting Director Darijo Srna met POLITICO in the marbled lobby of a Monaco hotel to discuss Shakhtar Donetsk’s UEFA Champions League prospects — and why they’re playing for something much bigger than on-field success.
“At this point we are not representing just Shakhtar Donetsk. We are representing the whole country,” said Palkin, ahead of four matches in London this fall and winter. “For us, it’s also to support Ukrainian people who left their homes and moved to London, to England. And therefore, these games completely change context. It’s very important every time to send messages to support Ukraine.”
Shakhtar’s survival among Europe’s elite is emblematic of Ukraine’s own endurance against Moscow’s bombardment. Forced out of Donetsk in 2014, the club has spent more than a decade moving between temporary host cities while keeping its Champions League ambitions alive throughout the war, despite the difficulty of attracting top European signings while based in a war zone.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022, Shakhtar Donetsk has played “home” matches in Poland and Germany. Club bosses are thrilled to be based in England for this season’s games against Greece’s AEK Athens, Portugal’s Sporting CP, Turkey’s Fenerbahçe and Spain’s Real Madrid. “[London] is the capital of the football world,” Palkin said.
“We don’t have pressure. We want to play football. We are 24/7 under stress in Ukraine. And we want to just go out and play for our fans, for Ukraine,” added Srna, a former star defender for Shakhtar Donetsk and the Croatian national team.
Invest in Ukraine
Large white letters adorn Shakhtar Donetsk’s orange and black jersey bearing the name of SCM, the country’s biggest private financial and industrial investment company, owned by Ukraine’s richest man and the club owner, Rinat Akhmetov.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unabating assault has cost tens of thousands of lives in Ukraine, and also caused hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damage to infrastructure across the country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has crisscrossed the globe in recent months trying to maintain Western support for Kyiv, as it runs short on cash and critical air defenses.
Closely connected to Shakhtar Donetsk, officials at SCM are appealing to Western investors that they are the key to Ukraine’s reconstruction — and that it can start already. Natalya Yemchenko, chief corporate affairs officer at SCM, said that any investment would pay an immediate dividend for Europe.
“It’s a good time to invest in Ukraine, not from the point of view of big and easy money. It’s a great time to invest from the view of strategic security issues, energy security issues [and] food security issues. It’s a very good time to create strength in Ukraine to protect Europe and to make Europe more ready for the next years,” Yemchenko told POLITICO at a separate event in Monaco.
While some of the military and reconstruction financing that has poured into Ukraine during the war has ended up in the crosshairs of anti-graft investigations — including one prominent case that ensnared a former minister in Zelenskyy’s government, and the president’s top aide Andriy Yermak — Yemchenko emphasized SCM’s commitment to anti-corruption.
“We have zero tolerance [for] corruption inside of our business. And I would say from our experience, when you see some big cases, it means that the anti-corruption system works. It would be much worse if during the war we would not see any cases of fighting this corruption,” she said.
Russia’s hybrid campaign against Europe has sharpened SCM’s case for investment in Ukraine. The company argues that Ukraine is already Europe’s first line of defense — and that keeping its economy strong helps make the rest of the continent safer.
For Yemchenko, the investment case is inseparable from the war. Ukraine cannot keep defending Europe if its economy fails. She said Russia’s recent attacks on businesses are meant to leave people feeling desolate.
“They would like to demotivate Ukrainian business. Shopping malls, logistics centers: They are the main target for the last two months. And I do believe that they would like to make life in Ukraine almost impossible,” she said.
“We saw it in Mariupol, what they started to do from the very beginning. They start to create a humanitarian catastrophe. Their first target was telecoms. Then it was heating. Then water. They destroy everything connected to basic needs. Why? Because they think that people will leave cities, including Kyiv,” she added.
“And again, this war is a Ukrainian war, but to a big extent, it’s a European war, unfortunately.”
