The players were chosen from among the thousands of Ukrainians wounded in the war. With limbs lost to Russian attacks, they gathered at a stadium in Kyiv over the weekend, ready to embark on a new contest: a soccer tournament. Organized by Ukraine’s Association of Football, the “League of the Mighty” is Ukraine’s first soccer championship for amputees. Over the past year, the association has invested in local communities to establish teams, recognizing the growing number of war-wounded citizens as a result of the nearly three-year war.
With six outfield players and one goalkeeper on each side, they engaged in intense matches. Outfield players, all lower-limb amputees, and goalkeepers with upper-limb amputations, played without prostheses, relying on wrist clutches for control. Pokrova AMP won the tournament, with captain Valentyn Osovskyi describing the triumph as exhilarating. “We're really glad that we had to work our way through, it was interesting,” he said, adding that the goal is to have their own championship and to create a strong team to represent Ukraine on the international level.
“This will be a priority for the next few years for us,” said Andriy Shevhenko, president of the Ukrainian Association of Football, noting there are more than 100,000 amputees in the country, most of them “soldiers who defended our country.”. For Olena Balbek, adviser to the president of the association, the sport is one way to provide mental and physical rehabilitation for amputees while also normalizing their growing presence in society.
