Stadiums of war

How did you start Stadioners on Instagram, and what was the original idea behind the account?

Visiting football stadiums has been part of my life for a long time. Even before the full-scale invasion, I had spent more than 20 years travelling around Ukraine in search of interesting stadiums and football matches. So when the full-scale invasion began, I naturally started paying attention to how the war was changing these places. In the summer of 2022, I began visiting stadiums that had been damaged by russian shelling. At first, I was simply interested in seeing how the stadiums themselves, and the cities around them, had changed. It was only later that I realised how important it was to systematically document what was happening to Ukrainian football stadiums during the war.

In the autumn of 2024, I started sharing this work more actively on social media. I wanted not only to document these places, but also to tell people outside Ukraine about Ukrainian football, its history, its culture, and the way the war has changed football places across the country.

You document Ukrainian football through its stadiums. What do you look for when you arrive at a stadium?

First of all, you have to consider whether it is even possible to reach the stadium. The further southeast you travel in Ukraine, the more difficult the security situation becomes. Active fighting is still taking place in some parts of the country, while the temporarily occupied territories are inaccessible. So there are places I simply cannot reach, even with a camera. But when I do get to a stadium, it is important for me to feel its atmosphere, even if it is empty. The feeling is often very strange. It is unusual to stand on the concrete among broken plastic seats and pieces of glass in the stands, looking at a yellowing pitch marked by shell strikes. Not so long ago, football matches were being played there and the stands were full of people.

I usually try to photograph what I see, but I also make notes about my own feelings and impressions. For me, it is important to document not only the condition of a stadium, but also what it feels like to be there.

How important is the aesthetic dimension of football in your approach?

It is very important to me. I have never seen a stadium simply as a place where a football match takes place. I have always been interested in the stadiums themselves, their architecture, location, history, details, as well as their atmosphere and connection to the city and the people who come there.

That is probably why I can enjoy visiting a stadium even when there is no match. The entrance gate, old stands, seats, floodlight towers, fences, scoreboard, all of these things tell their own story. After the stadiums encountered the war, this aesthetic perspective did not disappear, but the context changed.

Now, alongside the architecture and atmosphere, I see the traces of destruction, debris, broken windows and shell damage. That contrast has also become part of my work.

How has the war changed the way you document these places?

The war changed not so much how I photograph stadiums, but why I photograph them. Before, I photographed football places that I found interesting, their architecture, atmosphere and details. Now photography has also become a way of preserving evidence of what is happening to these places. Some stadiums will never be rebuilt, they have disappeared forever.

Others may be rebuilt or transformed, but there are doubts about whether their original character will survive. That makes it especially important to document them as they are now. This approach gradually turned photography into research. It became important for me not only to show what happened to a stadium, but also to collect its history and preserve as much evidence about it as possible.

Beyond football itself, what do these stadiums tell us about Ukrainian culture, history and identity?

Stadiums tell us a lot about the cities where they are located. They are not just sports facilities, but places connected to the memories of several generations. People met there, spent their free time there, supported their teams and celebrated victories.

Through the history of a particular stadium, you can learn a lot about the history of the city itself. The war has added another dimension to this. When you look at a map of the damaged stadiums, you can see that cities in the east and south of Ukraine, closer to the front line or the russian border, have been particularly affected. There is a certain symbolism in that: the closer to russia, the greater the destruction.

So today, these stadiums are more than just part of the history of Ukrainian football. They are witnesses to how Ukraine, its cities and its people have changed, and at the same time witnesses to what the war is trying to destroy.

What made you decide to turn this work into a book?

The idea of a book did not come immediately. At first, I was simply photographing stadiums and collecting material, and later I began sharing the stories behind them on social media. But gradually I realised that this was not enough for a project of this kind. I believe that this kind of evidence needs to be preserved on paper. The internet moves very quickly, photographs and texts appear, change and eventually get lost among huge amounts of new content.

A book, on the other hand, can remain as a physical document of this history for decades. So I wanted to make more than just a photobook. I wanted it to have artistic, documentary and historical value. I had already published books before, so I understood how the process worked. That experience also gave me the confidence to turn my years of work on Stadioners into a full-scale book project.

Is there a particular stadium in the book that has stayed with you more than the others?

Probably the Yurii Haharin Stadium in Chernihiv. Before the full-scale invasion, I had watched football matches there several times, so it was a stadium I knew well. It was also the first stadium I visited after the full-scale war began, in the summer of 2022.

Seeing a place I remembered so differently, now damaged and empty, was a very powerful experience. I returned there several more times later. Perhaps that is why this stadium has a special meaning for me, I saw it before the war, after the destruction, and then again later, watching how it continued to change.

After documenting so much of Ukrainian football, what do you hope people outside Ukraine will understand about its culture?

Football in Ukraine began to change significantly back in 2014, when russia’s war against Ukraine began, and in 2022 it developed into a full-scale invasion.

One important moment was the truce between the fan groups of different clubs. Years of rivalry between supporters moved into the background, and football became one of the places where people united in the face of a common threat. Since then, Ukrainian football has lost many clubs, stadiums and entire football communities. Dozens of stadiums can no longer host matches, some towns and cities are occupied or have been destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people have lost the opportunity to support their teams in their home stadiums.

At the same time, football continues to exist. Matches are still being played during the war, but under strict safety rules that vary depending on the region and the facilities available at each stadium. I would like people outside Ukraine to understand that Ukrainian football is not just sport. It is part of everyday life, urban culture and people’s memories.

Even during the war, people continue to go to stadiums, support their teams and find positive emotions through football. Perhaps this ability to preserve a sense of normal life in extraordinary circumstances is one of the most important characteristics of Ukrainian football culture.