Famous Moscow club rejoiced when a rocket destroyed a building in Kyiv and killed a European champion

The social media accounts of the Moscow-based Lokomotiv football club did not even hide their joy when a Russian missile hit the Ukrainian Loko arena in Kyiv in January 2024 and destroyed the building with its gymnasiums. According to the head of the sports club, Oleksandr Yegorov, the Russian capital has wanted only one Lokomotiv since Soviet times, and our team, which began the history of the railwaymen in 1919, was like a bone in the throat.

That is why the terrorist state was very happy when their missile hit the Loko building in the Solomyansky district of Kyiv.

"On January 24, 2024, we were supposed to open a boxing hall and a martial arts hall. And on January 23, at 7:30 in the morning, a rocket arrived. Unfortunately, one person was killed and five were seriously injured. The deceased was Mykhailo Donsky. He was a locomotive at heart and a Ukrainian and European powerlifting champion," Yegorov told us.

According to Oleksandr, Mykhailo came to Loko almost every morning with his family and worked out in the club's gym.

"He was very fond of Lokomotiv. And, unfortunately, it happened that while the alarm was sounding, they went down to the shelter, and the missile hit these ceilings near the bomb shelter. It pierced the roof completely and hit the place closest to it," the Loko director recalled.

"He fought for his life for quite a long time. But, unfortunately, it seems that five days later Mykhailo passed away. So we will definitely hang a plaque in his memory when we reconstruct the building. In general, we hope that in the near future we will restore and reconstruct Lokomotiv and do everything to ensure that even more children will be here," Yegorov added.

Currently, a lot of children from IDP families who have already lost their clubs - from Luhansk, Donetsk, Mariupol, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia - are training at Loko Kyiv.

"We have about 200 children who are internally displaced. It was a shock for them when the rocket hit our building. Many children came to these ruins. And they said with tears in their eyes, "Have we really lost another club? And when we saw this, we decided to gather everyone and immediately wrote in all the groups that we were going to have a training session tonight, no matter what," Oleksandr said.

Having lost their own premises, the club's management had to make arrangements with neighboring universities, colleges, and schools to ensure that their children had somewhere to train that day: "All age groups came out to train to explain to the kids that we will not close. We will continue to exist."

Meanwhile, the Russian Federation did not even hide their joy over the tragedy in Kyiv.

"Russia wanted people to cheer for Lokomotiv alone. Even when our arena was hit by their missile, they wrote on their Loko Moscow resources - on Instagram, Facebook - that there was finally only one Lokomotiv left," Yegorov recalled.

"Well, assholes, because when we changed our logo to be different from Moscow's, but left it in these colors that are inherent to us, because it's historically our idea, not theirs, we looked up the archives and found almost 146 teams around the world called Lokomotiv. 146! And what are these creatures supposed to do now, destroy all 145 of them so that only theirs remains? But this is such a disgusting imperial nation that is used to living under oppression, under a hood," Oleksandr is outraged.

However, according to the director of Lokomotiv, despite the fact that the building is quite badly damaged and cannot be restored, as well as the locker rooms nearby, the club will still exist: "Now we are preparing for the winter. We are thinking about how to arrange everything and make it comfortable for the children. And we are grateful to our partners."

Earlier, OBOZ.UA told how the USSR destroyed the Kyiv football team, and Russia bombed its arena. And in September, the oldest club in the capital turned 105 years old.

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