Maksym Makson_AAA Andrasiuk: "Electronic football helps people to distract themselves from the war and not fall into depression"

08.08.2022 09:10

Maksym Makson_AAA Andrasiuk is one of the stars of Ukrainian cyber football. In three years, the currently 30-year-old player managed not only to become a member of the Ukrainian cyber football team in the PES discipline, but also to reach the quarterfinals of the 2021 European Championship together with the team. This achievement remains the highest in the so far short history of performances of the Ukrainian e-football national team on the international stage.

And Maksym is a Ukrainian who, like millions of his fellow citizens, was forced to stop doing what he loved when a full-scale war came to our country on February 24, 2022. Andrasyuk met the Russian military invasion in his native village of Zorya in Donetsk region, which is 30 km from Mariupol. And stuck in the territory temporarily occupied by the enemy for four whole months!

"February 24 was a day of stupor, when everyone sat on their phones in a panic, and no one understood what was happening. On the 25th, we lost electricity. The lights and the Internet were turned off, and these were bad prerequisites.

I was still calling my friends from Mariupol, I wanted to go to the city. I knew that the situation there was even more difficult, because battles were already taking place on the outskirts of the city from the Taganroz highway. On February 27, the gas was turned off. And I clearly remembered the day when in the evening I heard the hum of machinery on the street. It lasted about an hour and a half. And then the house started to smell of diesel fuel. In the morning I saw that it was Russian equipment. And he realized that Mariupol was in a ring. On February 28, the mobile connection disappeared. And we were left without any communication with the outside world," tells his story Maksym, who in the summer of 2021, together with Serhii Sergobibika Marchenko, wrote a new page in the history of Ukrainian cyber football by reaching the quarterfinals of UEFA eEuro 2021, and six months later found himself at the epicenter of the Russian invasion occupation troops in Donetsk region.

In peacetime, Makson deftly controlled the joystick and scored goals against the opponents of the Ukrainian national team in the football simulator PES. When the war came, the residents of the house where Maksym lived divided their responsibilities among themselves in order to survive. He was responsible for finding drinking water.

"We had to go to a neighboring village to get water. The comrade, who had already left at that time, had a Gazelle with a barrel. So I carried water with it. To drive to a nearby village, I had to pass four roadblocks and almost kneel at each one, explaining the purpose of my trip. There were threats and humiliation from the Russian soldiers. They immediately occupied our school, village council and kindergarten. They settled there and set up posts. They started telling people that they are here forever, that they will help the locals, that they will be saved," Andrasiuk says, adding that those units that tried to explain to the Russian military that they are not welcome here ended up very badly.

March 2022 became the most tragic month in the modern history of Mariupol, which officially had a population of 450 people, but the beginning of the war in the eastern regions in 2014 and the creation of the so-called "DPR" and "LPR" actually turned it into a city of a million people. Most of the townspeople evacuated, but many witnessed the most terrible events in which the aggressor's army was involved, including the bombing of a drama theater, from which the Russian aviation was not stopped even by the huge inscription "Children" in white paint. Andrasiuk lost relatives in Mariupol, but official data on the number of dead as a result of the war crime in the Azov city still remain unknown. According to Maxim himself, the number is tens of thousands.

"The Russians simply destroyed everything in their path in Mariupol. Their logic was simple: a fire adjuster or a sniper could sit in every house, explains the total destruction of the city of Andrasyuk. "But everyone knew that the Azov battalion was based in Azovstal, and there were practically no soldiers left in the city." 

Have you ever heard of filtering? Perhaps you have come across this word in stories about the Second World War that dealt with the Nazi arbitrariness towards the Jews. Andrasyuk had to experience the filtering process firsthand: "All residents of my village, which is about 2,5 thousand people, had to undergo filtering. These are people from young to old age. The interrogation took place in a room where those present played the role of a good and a bad policeman. They checked for tattoos, took fingerprints. They checked data in mobile phones, looked for contacts with people who were serving in the Armed Forces at that time. Several people were shot. One day, they were demonstratively taken out of their homes, their hands were tied with tape, they were blindfolded and they were taken to an unknown destination. Later it became known that they are no longer alive."

During the three weeks since the beginning of the Russian offensive, the Ukrainian cyberfootball player remained without contact and news about what was happening outside the region. After that, Maksym decided that he had enough - he needed to leave. The chance to leave life in the occupation behind extended through a trip to Donetsk, and from there Andrasyuk managed to leave Ukraine only on the third attempt, and send his family to a safe place abroad.

Maxim currently lives in Kyiv. Denys Davydov, the first vice-president of the Ukrainian Electronic Football Association, gave him shelter. And two weeks ago, Andrasiuk took part in the first wartime cyber football tournament — selection from eFootball (PES has undergone rebranding) for the right to represent Ukraine at the European Esports Championship 2022 in Montenegro. He succeeded reach the finals, but in the decisive series he lost to Vitaly bydbprosche Litvinov and took second place.

"Very pleasant feelings from the tournament in Lviv. It is a pity that not all players were able to come due to the events in our country. But I got cool emotions. The tournament, even for a day, allowed us to return to the world of civilized life, which our country lived before the invasion. Thanks to such events, you return to adequacy and understand that life goes on. Now e-football helps people to distract themselves from the war and not fall into depression," Maksym shares his impressions of the competitions. And he adds that, in addition to cyber football, the lion's share of his free time is now taken up by helping the Armed Forces of Ukraine: "If I have to take up arms, I will go to war. But I think I'd be more useful behind the scenes—helping the military in need of supplies. Winter is coming, and our defenders need to get dressed. Because in a few months you won't be sitting in a trench in a T-shirt and a bulletproof vest."

"The war happened because we live next to the enemy. When you have a drug addict, a murderer or a drunkard living across the wall from you, sooner or later he will visit you," — this is how Maksym explains the military aggression of the Rashists, because of which millions of Ukrainians have been suffering for more than five months.

The argument of the Russians about the protection of the Russian-speaking population from the so-called "Ukrainian Nazis" is not taken seriously by the cyberfootball player, who uses both Russian and Ukrainian in his everyday life: "This is a completely invented pretext for an attack. I have never felt oppressed in the matter of language. No one ever reproached me for this. Russia simply says that it helps the Russian-speaking population, but as a result, it bombed the Russian-speaking cities. Mariupol was probably one of the largest Russian-speaking cities in Ukraine. Now he is gone..."