After the collapse of the Soviet Union Russian football’s national squad was able to take up the mantle as the official successor side of the former USSR national team. However, arguably the greatest ever Soviet team to grace the World Cup was not a Moscow creation – indeed it is often forgotten that the much celebrated USSR team of the Mexico 86 World cup finals was effectively a Ukrainian national side in all but name. Built around the all-conquering Dynamo Kyiv team of the mid-1980s, the Soviet side which Ukrainian coach Valeriy Lobanovskiy took to Mexico 86 and Euro 88 is fondly remembered for its surgically precise football and taste for net-bursting wonder goals. However, few outside of Ukraine realize that this side was actually as Ukrainian as borsch or salo.

Ukraine’s national team will go into the coming Euro 2012 European Championships as one of the least favoured host nations in the competition’s history. Unlike Germany in 1988, England in 1996 and Portugal in 2004, few will be expecting Ukraine’s involvement to last long, with the country’s main contribution to the tournament likely to be the actual hosting of matches rather than winning them. However, Ukraine possesses a not-so-secret weapon in the form of the country’s emerging teenage generation, which shot to international recognition in August 2009 by winning UEFA’s Under-19s European Championship. Ukraine’s Euro 2009 youth victory was a major milestone in the development of the country’s footballing infrastructure and was the first victory Ukraine had recorded at any level since entering international football as an independent nation for the first time ever in the mid-1990s. This crop of teenage talent comes from the fast-improving youth team programmes of the country’s leading clubs.

International festival of cutting-edge visual arts Nightlife hotspot celebrates a dozen years! Lviv has long been at the centre of the geopolitical tug of war that has seen Ukraine become one of the most fought-over lands in the entire world, so it comes as no surprise that the city has a rich tradition of guerrilla military activities, with the fighters of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army of WWII among the most revered of the city’s historical figures. However, in modern Lviv there is no longer a strong paramilitary presence, but the art of shooting on sight has not been lost, with the extreme sport of paintball fast gaining an enthusiastic local following.