Ukrainian football legend Andriy Shevchenko has admitted in an interview with AFP he cried when he “saw children running through a field strewn with missile craters” in Irpin, a commuter town outside Kyiv which was liberated from Russian control.

The 2004 Ballon D’Or winner said he was overwhelmed by the youngsters’ determination to play football despite the carnage around them.

Shevchenko, 46, the son of “a military man” who despite his upbringing “stood against wars all his life”, was so angry at the Russian invasion in February he “felt such excruciating pain I couldn’t even breathe.”

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