“The Whole Country Is Watching”: Ukraine Looks To Secure World Cup Qualification

It’s more than 1,800 miles from Severodonetsk to Glasgow.

As Russian pressure increases in the strategically key eastern Ukraine city where two-thirds of properties have been reported as destroyed, an international football match in the Scottish city would seem somewhat irrelevant.

Ukrainian Taras Berezovets, who worked as a political analyst before the Russian invasion started on February 24 but has since joined Ukraine’s special forces, would disagree.

Like many other of his “brothers in arms” – given football has always been the number one sport in Ukraine – Berezovets will be doing his best to keep across developments in his country’s World Cup playoff against Scotland on Wednesday.

If Ukraine does get past Scotland at Hampden Park and then beats Wales in Cardiff on Sunday, the country will have remarkably secured qualification for the World Cup in Qatar later this year.

According to Berezovets, work is underway to find a broadcast of the match. But even if that’s impossible for those on the front line, he says those fighting will still gather together and listen on the radio if they can.

“When the football team is playing, the whole country is watching. Football is the number one sport in Ukraine, it’s extremely popular,” Berezovets told CNN Sport over the phone from the country’s embattled south.