Kiev (AP) – After calling for help from a hotel in Kiev, a group of Brazilian soccer players working in Ukraine and their relatives were apparently able to leave the city.
Shakhtar Donetsk player Marlon Santos and physiotherapist Luciano Rosa posted videos of a train on Instagram. He was therefore on his way to Tschnerowitz in western Ukraine, near the borders with Romania and Moldova.
In two videos on Santos’ Instagram account on Thursday and Saturday, he and several other players, as well as women, children and elderly men – a good 40 people in all – could be seen at a hotel in the Ukrainian capital. They asked the Brazilian government for help in leaving the country in the face of the Russian invasion. “We have to get out of here,” wrote the ex-Barcelona defender on the second video. They were running out of supplies like milk and diapers for their children, he stressed.
“All of us who were in the bunker of a hotel in Kiev managed to get out of there,” wrote Santos a few hours later on the video from the train. The embassy of their South American home country offered them the option of taking the train. The European Football Union UEFA and the Ukrainian Football Association provided an escort to the train station.
The news portal G1 reported that the Brazilians should continue from Chernivtsi by bus to Romania. There are other Brazilian footballers in Ukraine who are trying to leave the country with their families in various ways. More than 30 Brazilian players are under contract with Ukrainian top-flight clubs, 12 with Shakhtar Donetsk alone.