Former Shakhtar Donetsk coach, Paulo Fonseca reveals he’s stranded with his Ukrainian wife and son and ‘praying a bomb doesn’t fall on them’ on ‘the worst day of his life’

Portuguese football manager, Paulo Fonseca has revealed he is stranded in Ukraine with his wife and son after their last-ditch attempt to escape war-torn Kiev failed with their morning flight abandoned.

Fonseca, who previously coached Roma in Italy, is married to Ukrainian Katerina Ostroushko and they have a son together.

Fonseca had plotted an exit route from Kiev via a 10am flight, only to see all commercial flights suspended amid growing political tensions in Ukraine. 

Airports are destroyed following missile strikes, roads are log-jammed with Ukrainians trying to escape to nearby Poland and Fonseca is holed up in a Kiev hotel on what he has labelled the ‘worst day of his life’. 

‘I woke up at five in the morning with five explosions in a row,’ he told Jornal de Noticias. 

‘I had a flight scheduled for today, but now it is impossible to leave here, not least because the airports are already destroyed and the airspace has been closed. 

‘This is the worst day of my life. Now it’s time to wait and be lucky. And pray that a bomb doesn’t fall on us.’

Official figures said 40 Ukrainian troops had been killed in early skirmishes with ‘dozens’ wounded after Putin gave the green light for an early morning invasion on Thursday.

With flights grounded and Russia’s assault on the country from the south, east and north making an escape by land highly treacherous, Fonseca confessed to not knowing a way out. 

His wife Katerina wrote on Instagram, accompanied with a picture of the couple’s son: ‘Worst morning ever. Pain. Anger, anger, anger, and pain. 

‘My little son didn’t deserve the war. The children of Ukraine did not deserve the war.’