Former Croatia international captain Darijo Srna has shared details of the hours of chaos as he helped Shakhtar Donetsk's players away from Ukrainian capital Kyiv amid Russia's invasion of the country.
The 39-year-old, who played more than 500 games for Shakhtar and won 134 international caps, returned to his former club as director of football after ending his playing career in 2019.
He was in Donetsk in 2014, when the Russian annexation of Crimea took place, and the Donbas-based club have been playing their home games in Kyiv since 2020 and have seen one of their youth coaches killed as fighting continues within Ukraine's borders.
When the invasion began on February 24, those in Kyiv were forced to act quickly, and Srna has opened up on the need to make "good decisions" and the help offered by UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin.
“I was calm but I was afraid as well. I’d been through this before," Srna told The Guardian, explaining he had previously been forced to flee Donetsk three days before the airport attack of 2014.
"The club proposed two buses for everyone but there was nobody who could say to you: ‘Yes, everything will be OK on the road.’ On the second day the embassies were all saying they couldn’t help, it wasn’t secure, we had to stay in the hotel.
"That’s when you almost start to panic: in those first couple of days there was so much news around, some of it fake, and you start to receive a lot of phone calls from friends and families saying: ‘Get out, get out.’ You’re under pressure and it’s not easy to be composed at that moment."
"It was a kind of chaos," added Srna, who has been helping Shakhtar's players and staff travel west while attempting to retain composure while being forced to huddle in basements as sirens go off overhead.
He has also spoken highly of the role played by Ceferin in helping with the evacuation, with the UEFA chief helping coordinate transport for players and Ukraine FA chief Andriy Pavelko enabling some of the South Americans on the club's books to travel towards relative safety.
Shakhtar have a long history of signing Brazilian players, and one of their current squad members - Brazil-born Ukraine international Junior Moraes - was put in direct contact with Ceferin.
“Ceferin and Pavelko did a huge job,” Srna explained after the evacuation.
“They showed that they are not just top presidents but top people too. Ceferin took this mission on as if he was looking after his own family. In war, you find out who is your friend and who is not; who gives you a glass of water and who gives you a glass of milk. Today that feels very important.”
Some of Shakhtar's foreign players were permitted to leave the country but many Ukrainian nationals were forced to stay within its borders, and the club has shared a number of messages on social media praising the football community for its solidarity.
Current Ukrainian internationals Oleksandr Zinchenko and Andriy Yarmolenko are among those to have called on the football community to help stop the war, sending messages as part of a wider appeal.
Yarmolenko has also taken aim at Russian players for not speaking out, asking "why are you sitting like sh******s and not saying anything?".
"I'll be honest, if not for my daughter, my family, I would be there [fighting]," Zinchenko told Gary Lineker in an emotional interview, after Karpaty Lviv player and army recruit Vitalii Sapylo was among the first footballers killed during the war.
"I'm so proud. 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...There are no words," Zinchenko said.
"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]."
