The Ukrainian national team player Mychajlo Mudryk left Shakhtar Donetsk for the big club Chelsea in the Premier League. However, the money that the Ukrainian club received (up to 1.2 billion) will not only go to sporting investments.
“I am donating today 25 million dollars (equivalent to roughly 260 million kroner), to help our soldiers, defenders and their families,” says Shakhtar’s chairman Rinat Achmetov in a press release.
He also says that Shakhtar has the military to thank for the fact that talks about Ukrainian football can even be held and that they will play a friendly match against Chelsea at the Donbass arena in a “Ukrainian Donetsk”.
In February 2022, Russia recognized Donetsk and Luhansk as independent republics and announced a “special military operation” to protect Russians in the enclaves. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine.
“The money will be used to cover various needs — from providing medical and prosthetic treatment and psychological support to meeting specific requests,” says Achmetov.