“Plumes of thick black smoke and a rapid-fire echo of explosions rose into the afternoon sky. Several hundred people from eastern Ukraine, almost all of them men in black T-shirts and balaclavas, were singing nationalistic songs as they threw smoke bombs onto the soccer field in front of them. They were members of the Shakhtar Ultras, a group of hard-core soccer fans who support Ukraine’s champions, Shakhtar Donetsk, anywhere they play. On this sunny August day, they were watching the Donetsk derby between Shakhtar and Olimpik. But the match, like all of Shakhtar’s matches these days, was not taking place in Donetsk, which has been battered by months of shelling. Instead the fans traveled hundreds of miles west to the capital, Kiev.” NY Times