Ukraine refugees show Dortmund fans 'fear and horror' of war

On May 26, 2018, 9-year-old Vladyslav Lieposhkin from Mariupol, Ukraine, accompanied former Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius onto the pitch ahead of the Champions League final at the Olympic Stadium in Kyiv – "an amazing experience," he recalls with a smile.

Four years later, on April 26, 2022, Vlad attended another football match, albeit under very different circumstances, as Borussia Dortmund hosted Dynamo Kyiv in a friendly to raise money for Ukraine in the wake of the Russian invasion.

At the end of March, Vlad and his mother Anna escaped besieged Mariupol and traveled to Germany via Crimea, Russia, Belarus and Poland, a journey of several thousand kilometers by car, eventually arriving in Dortmund in time for the exhibition match.

"Dynamo were super and they won 3-2," said Vlad. "And Dortmund's stadium is beautiful."

And on Saturday, Vlad, now 13, got another chance to visit the Westfalenstadion as Borussia Dortmund opened their 2022/23 Bundesliga campaign with a 1-0 win over Bayer Leverkusen.

'None of these photos were taken for artistic reasons'

DW met Vlad and Anna at a photo exhibition ahead of kick-off, organized by the BVB-Lernzentrum (BVB learning center), part of the Fan Project Dortmund, a social work and pedagogical organization which works with young football fans in the city.

Part of the "Meine Stadt – Mein Verein" (my city – my club) project, which aims to help new arrivals integrate in Dortmund, the exhibition featured a series of photographs taken on smartphones by a group of 25 Ukrainians, mainly women aged 25-35 and children, who were forced to flee the Russian advance and who have ended up in Dortmund, like Anna and Vlad. Most men of military age are not allowed to leave Ukraine.

The photos show destroyed houses and apartment blocks, city streets buried under rubble, and the human beings who lived there. The fact that the images were taken on the smartphones of the refugees themselves is of particular importance, according to curator Nataliya Puchkarova.

"When you're fleeing, you only take the most important things with you, and you only take photographs of what is important to you," she explained to DW. "None of these photos were taken for artistic reasons; they were taken because they were important in that moment, because it might have been the last time they saw their house."

'We felt the shockwave'

Two photographs show two badly damaged apartment blocks in the city of Chernihiv, just north of Kyiv, which were struck by bombs dropped from Russian aircraft soon after the initial invasion.

Oksana, who had already fled to Chernihiv when Russian-backed separatists took over her native Donetsk in 2014, lived just around the corner and decided to flee with her young daughter. "We felt the shockwave from the explosions," she said. "We just prayed that our building would survive and that the car would be ok so we could flee."

Nadija is from Kryvyi Rih in southern Ukraine, not far from the embattled cities of Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Kherson, and also the hometown of president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. She arrived in Germany via Romania with her 11-year-old daughter.

"My heart and my head hurt when I see the damage that has been done," she said, looking at the images. "Our Ukraine is a beautiful, peaceful country and the Russians were our closest neighbors. We never thought they would come and shoot at us with weapons. What have we done? We just wanted to raise our kids and bake bread. It makes me want to cry."

Integration via football and Borussia Dortmund

Why a football-related educational organization should be actively involved in such activities with Ukrainian refugees might not be immediately apparent but, for Johannes Böing of the BVB-Lernzentrum, the link is obvious.

"Football is a huge social phenomenon, it's so easily accessible and everyone can talk about it," he explained. "Football is also highly emotional and creates identity, so it's perfect to offer to people arriving here as a communal experience."

And no city in Germany is as synonymous with football as Dortmund, home not only of Borussia Dortmund and their famous Yellow Wall, but also of the German Football Museum.

"Borussia Dortmund is well-known and popular across the world," says Böing. "So when people arrive in the city and 'representatives' of Borussia Dortmund, whether officially from the club or from organizations like ours, approach them, talk to them and invite them to the stadium, it creates an immediate connection to the city and helps open the door."

It works the other way around, too, with the Ukrainians' photo exhibition also using the platform of football to teach BVB fans about the new arrivals in their city, where they've come from, and why.

"Football stands above everything in a city like Dortmund," said Sascha, a Borussia Dortmund fan visiting the exhibition. Sascha was actually born in Kharkiv and only recently drove to the Polish-Ukrainian border to pick up his great uncle. "It can have great integrative qualities and helps to bring different people together."

His friend, Denis, added: "You've seen these sorts of photos in the media, but seeing them alongside the people who actually took them … that's hard, it leaves an impression. But you have to show these photos, you have to show the truth. And there's nothing more truthful than photos straight from the smartphones of refugees."

'Fear and horror'

For Anna and Vlad, that truth remains all too real.

"It was scary and unsafe," Anna recalls of Mariupol in March. "The electricity, gas, heating and water were all off, people were cutting down trees in the school yard to create a fire and cook outside. They collected rainwater from the roof and slept fully-clothed under blankets. Planes flew dropping bombs. We couldn't believe that it was a war, that our neighbors would attack us."

On the morning of her birthday, March 6, a rocket struck their neighbors' apartment, shattering their windows and forcing them to move to another apartment. They managed to leave Mariupol and eventually made it to safety.

"We're safe and that's the main thing," she said. "But what gives me the most joy is seeing Vlad smile again, and not seeing the fear and horror in his eyes."

Edited by: Mark Hallam