Manchester City's Oleksandr Zinchenko has opened up about his concerns in Ukraine, following Russia's invasion of his homeland, and has expressed his gratitude for the support that he has received from the public during these distressing times.
For the past nine days, Ukraine has been under a military attack from Russia, after president Vladimir Putin ordered troops to invade their Eastern European neighbours.
The football world have since shown solidarity with Ukraine, with demonstrations of togetherness in stadiums and donations given over the last week, while Zinchenko was handed the captaincy by Fernandinho for City's FA Cup fifth-round tie against Peterborough United on Tuesday.
Speaking in an emotional interview for BBC programme Football Focus with Gary Lineker, a tearful Zinchenko thanked the public for their continued support and spoke about his "mission" to tell the world "the real truth" with what his happening in Ukraine.
"I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful to all these people for the support I'm getting here. I didn't realise it's going to be like that in this way. So I would like to say all of them big thanks. I appreciate it," the 25-year-old said.
"I'm getting a lot of messages from a lot of guys in Ukraine and they are asking me about the videos of support [from the UK]. So people are watching TV, the people are still watching football, and they can see all these things, and I guess it helps a lot for them.
"I'm so proud to be Ukrainian, and I will be forever for the rest of my life. And when you're watching the people, how they fight for their lives. I know the people, the mentality of my people from my country, they prefer to die, and they will die. But they're not going to give [up]."
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Zinchenko added: "I spoke with many people who are on our side. And they said that the way Russian TV is showing us is ridiculous. My mission is to show the rest of the world what's going on in this moment.
"There are few cities in the lowest part of Ukraine where the civilians, Russian people, are coming and they do fake protests that like 'we want to be with Russia' and stuff like that. I can show you one million pictures. I can show you one million videos, what they are doing now. I can show you every city in my country, which they destroyed.
"The people are starving there. The people are just surviving, sleeping on the ground, in bunkers, they cannot live a proper life."
"I was thinking a few days about this interview. Should I do it? Should I not?" he said. "But I just want to send the message to all the people that please don't ignore this. We need to stop the war."
Zinchenko is in contention to feature in Sunday afternoon's Manchester derby at the Etihad Stadium against rivals Manchester United.
Oliver Thomas
