Former football player helps Ukrainian kids

Croatian ex-footballer Ivica Piric spent some five years of his career playing in Ukraine. Now the retired international has returned to help the conflict-wracked country he calls a “second home”.

In a school gym in government-held territory several hundred kilometres from where pro-Russian rebels have been battling Kiev’s troops for 19 months, the 38-year-old former defender swapped news with dozens of school pupils.

They were among the hundreds that Piric — now a football agent — has helped send to Croatia to get away from the crisis in their homeland and relax on the Adriatic coast.

“I spent lots of time in Ukraine, I played here and Ukraine gave me and my family very much,” Piric, who played for the Arsenal Kiev, told AFP.

Over the summer Piric organised for roughly 300 children — some who fled the conflict and others the offspring of injured soldiers — to have a two-week break in the Croatian coastal town of Split. “Every morning we went to the beach and in the evening we played football,” said Georgiy Moskalenko (12) whose family left the rebel-held city Gorlivka around 18 months ago. “Everything was brilliant,” chimed in Oleksa-ndr Rudenko (15) whose policeman father fought on the frontline.

For Piric there is a deeper reason why he felt drawn to help — the plight of the children stirred memories of the war that rocked his own homeland in the early 1990s.

He was 13 when the fighting broke out with neighbouring Serbia following the break-up of socialist Yugoslavia in 1991 and he remembers how many countries cared for children who were left orphaned or homeless.

“Now I would like to help Ukrainian kids to forget their troubles at least for a while. Most of them are in a difficult situation, some lost their fathers,” he said.

The UN children fund (Unicef) says several hundred children have been killed and wounded and almost 184,000 uprooted from their homes during the fighting in Ukraine.

Piric’s work has garnered praise for the former player, who was hailed by first lady Maryna Poroshenko during a meeting in October.

But across the border in Russia — which Kiev and the West accuses of sending in troops to back the rebels — Piric’s activities have not gone down so well.

He said a sport director of a Russian club he work-ed with accused him of helping “fascists” in Ukr-aine and refused to sign documents to help Piric enter the country. But despite the fall-out, the ex-player says he remains determined to held Ukrai-nian children.