Before Vladimir Putin’s invading forces came swarming over the border, eastern Ukraine was the country’s beating heart of sports.
Now, that has been all but wiped out in a trail of devastation.
Moscow’s attempt to extinguish Ukrainian culture can be seen through the prism of prominent stadiums across the region, one of which even played host to footballers including Cristiano Ronaldo and Xavi, and pop megastars such as Beyoncé and Rihanna.
In several cities, gleaming sporting and cultural landmarks now resemble haunting, silent scenes from a zombie apocalypse movie. And on the Crimean Peninsula, illegally occupied by Russia since 2014, there’s another story: The repurposing of Ukrainian arenas as stages to further the Kremlin’s narrative.
“Aggressors deliberately try to destroy normal life and erase collective identity,” Glenn Micallef, European commissioner for culture and sport, told POLITICO. “Sport is essential in forming identity, and that is what the Russian aggressor wants to erase.” He warned that sporting federations “must ensure no platform for propaganda is provided.”
From Donetsk to Mariupol, and Luhansk to Crimea, POLITICO traced the fate of Ukraine’s sports and cultural facilities under Russian occupation to reveal the depth of Moscow’s war on its neighbor’s culture.
Donbas Arena, Donetsk
On Aug. 29, Donetsk’s once-glittering Donbas Arena turned 16. For 11 of those years, it has stood in Russian-occupied territory — abandoned, damaged and stripped of its original purpose.
Opened in 2009 by Shakhtar Donetsk’s billionaire owner Rinat Akhmetov, the $400 million stadium was Ukraine’s first officially “elite” European football arena. With a capacity of 52,000, it hosted Euro 2012 matches, Champions League games featuring iconic clubs like Barcelona and Juventus, and concerts by Beyoncé and Rihanna.
For a brief moment, it symbolized Ukraine’s ambition to join Europe’s sporting elite.
That era abruptly ended in 2014, when Russia’s war in the Donbas forced Shakhtar to flee. The stadium was shelled and its glass façade shattered, and later seized by Russian-backed militants. In a symbolic gesture of Russification, they even replaced the Ukrainian “a” in Shakhtar’s name with the Russian “e,” making it Shakhter, as they set up a new club from scratch.
“I had fought in many stadiums,” American boxer Paulie Malignaggi told POLITICO. He defeated Ukraine’s Vyacheslav Senchenko there in 2012 to claim the WBA welterweight title. “But this one stood out as the most modern and impressive. Everything was state-of-the-art — comfortable dressing rooms, sleek facilities and even a space for hosting after-parties. That fight was one of the defining moments of my career. The memories are bittersweet now.”
Volodymyr Boyko Stadium, Mariupol
After Russia’s lethal occupation of Mariupol in 2022, the city’s main stadium fell into the hands of an armed unit known as Española, formed from Russian football hooligans.
Videos released in May 2023 showed militants in Russian uniforms firing weapons and waving Soviet and Russian flags from the stands.
The arena, which had installed Ukraine’s most advanced hybrid turf in 2021, now lies in ruins. Its main stand is riddled with shell damage and the pitch withered away without water during the summer of 2022, amid some of Russia’s most ferocious military bombardment of the entire war.
Mariupol’s other sports facilities shared the same fate. The club’s training base was bulldozed and replaced by a Russian military academy. The Illichivets indoor sports complex, once the pride of the region, sustained dozens of direct hits from Russian shells and mortars. Its artificial turf field, installed in 2018, is almost completely destroyed — while the unique membrane roof and glass façade now require massive reconstruction.
Behind Moscow’s glossy propaganda selling Mariupol as a “new haven” for Russian settlers, locals see only ruined homes and the wreckage of their city’s sporting soul.
Avanhard Stadium, Luhansk
The Avanhard Stadium was once the pride and joy of Luhansk — and it has, for me, a uniquely personal connection.
It was here that Zorya made history in 1972, becoming one of only three teams not from a capital city ever to win the Soviet Union’s football championship. After independence in 1991, the club clawed its way up from the lower leagues in Ukraine to European competition and, when Zorya returned to the top flight, the 22,000-seat stadium was always packed.
Growing up in Luhansk in the 1990s and early 2000s, I remember standing in line with my father for hours, hoping to get tickets for our beloved 6th sector. The game was a fortnightly highlight, and a special connection with my dad. Luhansk also had a deep reverence for the team; everyone knew the players and greeted them on the streets.
And when the final whistle blew, the song “Luhanshchyna” filled the stadium, celebrating the region’s landscapes, history, hospitality and beauty. The tradition followed the team to Zaporizhzhia when it moved after the initial 2014 invasion, but there the song sounded different — a reminder to Zorya supporters that they may never again gather at their true home ground. Today, in a cruel twist, that same song is used by the separatists for their own celebrations, stripping it of the meaning it once held for the club and its fans.
“Even in the first league [the second division], we never had fewer than 8,000 fans,” Zorya legend Nikita Kamenyuka told POLITICO. “When we played Karpaty Lviv, 18,000 came. It was incredible. Playing in Luhansk gave us energy.”
In 2014, just after a renovation, Avanhard was shelled, seized by the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic backed by Putin, and abandoned. Propaganda concerts and matches played by a fake Zorya appeared.
Today, on the site where I have so many family ties and memories, its steps are crumbling, the traditionally yellow-blue seats are fading under the harsh sun and the athletic track around the pitch is cracking.
The Russians claim they will “renovate” it and make it better.
Lokomotiv Stadium, Crimea
Simferopol’s Lokomotiv Stadium, once home to Tavriya — Ukraine’s first national football champion after independence — has faced a strange fate since Russia’s occupation of Crimea.
Closed for seven years, it underwent a costly “reconstruction” before reopening in 2021 as a so-called training center for Crimean teams.
In 2025, it hosted a match between the “national teams” of occupied Crimea and the self-proclaimed Donetsk “republic.” The exhibition match, held as part of the “Day of Russia” celebrations, took place before a sparse crowd. Players entered the field under Russian and DPR flags, overseen by FIFA referee Yuri Vaks of Simferopol, who served as a Ukrainian league official until 2017.
Tavriya’s training base near Bakhchysarai lies abandoned, while other Crimean stadiums illegally host Russian league games, defying international football rules.
“Holding matches by Russia in temporarily occupied Crimea is a blatant violation of international law and yet another manifestation of Russian hybrid aggression. Matches in stadiums that Russia seized along with our land are an attempt to make it seem as if nothing has happened. But it has,” Matviy Bidny, Ukraine’s minister of youth and sports, told POLITICO.
“Every game under the Russian flag — anywhere, but especially in Ukrainian Crimea — is an attempt to whitewash a crime,” he added.