Brazilian footballers flee Ukraine (VIDEO)
A group of Brazilian football players who were stranded in the bunker of a Kiev hotel with their families have finally managed to safely flee the premises after intervention from UEFA and the Ukrainian Football Association.
Shakhtar Donetsk defender Marlon Santos confirmed the development by posting a video to Instagram from inside the train.
The group are headed to the city of Chernivtsi in western Ukraine, which allows access to the borders shared with Romania and Moldova.
Santos's wife, Maria Paula Marinho, also showed part of the journey in an Instagram live session.
"All of us that were in the bunker of a hotel in Kiev managed to get out of there," Marlon confirmed.
"The Brazilian Embassy gave this option of the train to us. [But] who gave all the escorted security to the train station was UEFA, together with the Ukrainian Football Federation. Thank you all. [There are] no words to thank you.
"Now we're all on the train on a journey to the city of Chernivtsi, in the west of Ukraine, 535 kilometers from Kiev, near the borders of Romania and Moldova. Keep praying for us."
The group of around 50 Brazilian players and their families, with children ranging from a few months old to six and seven years of age, took a metro train to the train station before embarking to Chernivtsi.
They were informed of the possible transport out of the Ukrainian capital at around 9am local time, as the Brazilian Embassy's Telegram channel spread information on trains leaving various cities in the country amid the Russian military operation.
Brazilian media outlets such as UOL later reported that the group had managed to get the train, which should take around 11 hours to reach its destination before a bus provided by the Brazilian Embassy helps them over the border.
The group's successful evacuation from Kiev comes after they first refused to take transport offered to them by Brazil's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, known as Itamaraty.
"We're still in the bunker at the Opera Hotel in Kiev," confirmed Marlon at around 2am on Saturday morning. "We didn't try to get the train organized by the Brazilian Embassy. It would have been high-risk for all of us."
"We were told about the train at the last minute and without any security strategy," explained football agent Augusto Nogueira, who represents Shakhtar's new 18-year-old right back Vinicius Tobias, to UOL.
"It was not feasible to go out and for everyone to move around. Even more so at that time. We are still here," Nogueira added, while citing the lack of security the group had to head to Kiev's Central Station as bombs could be heard from the Opera Hotel, where food and water supplies were said to be running out.
Marlon claimed that each member of the group that was in the bunker at the Opera Hotel had managed to flee, including Shakhtar striker Junior Moraes.
While the other players and their loved ones should be able to cross the border easily, however, Moraes may encounter difficulties because he took Ukrainian citizenship in 2019.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has put a ban on male citizens aged between 18 and 60 leaving the country as part of a 90-day full military mobilization plan, with the organizers of the Ukrainian Premier League announcing earlier in the week that the competition would be halted for at least a month.
