This is the Guardian.

Hello and welcome to a special bonus episode of The Guardian Football Weekly,

an interview with Madan Bartolovic. He's the assistant coach of the top flight Ukrainian side

in Nulets Petrovier, a crow at to move to Ukraine when he was 19. He's lived there since 2006.

He's currently in Deneepro and is safe. Nick Ames originally interviewed him and four Ukrainian

players. Madan has very kindly agreed to speak to us for the pod. We felt it was important to

hear his story. This is The Guardian Football Weekly.

Joining me and Barry, hello, Barry, by the way. Hi Max. Is Nick Ames, hi Nick.

Thank you very much Max, hello. Yeah, after we hear from Madan, we'll chat to Nick a bit about the

process of getting a story like this out there and getting in touch with people in Ukraine. But

here is Madan's story. Well, first of all, thank you so much for talking to us. We really appreciate

your time in what is a clear and impossibly difficult situation. I mean, most importantly,

are you safe right now? Yes, the situation in my city is quite normal now in Nipro.

It's 200 kilometers from Donetsk, from Harcov, Mariu, 250. And in our region is very quiet

situation. Of course, it's panicked by the people, understand? Because it's near to us and it's

crazy what's happening. It's a big shock. All people go to the west of Ukraine and go to Poland,

Romania. And how's the last week or two been? We was flying from Turkey for our pre-season.

And we fly in the one o'clock in the night to Kiev and go to our hotel and go sleep, of course,

because we have a game in two days against the Namokia. We was preparing for this. And in the morning

four or five in the morning, start this bombing and it was all in the hotel and the morning came

all to the reception. Nobody can believe that that's happening in Ukraine and that put in make this

like this, like Hitler in 80 years ago. It was a crazy situation and everybody was in the

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