Benfica player's house destroyed in Russian attack on Kyiv

Despite being in Kyiv at the time of the attack, the player's family appears to have escaped unharmed. Sudakov, however, was not in Lisbon or the Ukrainian capital, but in Poland, playing for his national team.

"This is what my house looks like after tonight. It was the arrival of the shahed [the drones used by Russia]. My wife, my son, and my mother were home at the time," the player added in the caption to the shared images.

On his Telegram channel, the athlete resorted to harsher language to respond to the attack. "The orcs will say that there's military equipment stored in my house," he commented, using a pejorative term that has been used by Ukrainians to refer to Russians and mocking Moscow's justifications for attacking civilian targets.

The Benfica family is with you, Heorhii. ❤️‍???? pic.twitter.com/Iw9EE51NvE

— SL Benfica (@SLBenfica) September 7, 2025

Benfica has already responded to this attack with a short statement on social media. "The Benfica family is with you, Heorhii," it reads, using Ukrainian phonetics to spell their player's first name.

Three years ago he was locked in a bunker in Kiev, now he could become Benfica's most expensive player ever: Sudakov is a reinforcement for Lage

The footballer — whose transfer cost Benfica a fixed €27 million, plus a target fee that could reach €5 million — was part of the Shakhtar Donetsk youth academy and has been part of the Ukrainian club's first team since 2020.

For this reason, Sudakov was affected by the Russian invasion in 2022, and Portuguese coach Fernando Valente, who had previously managed Shakhtar Donetsk, revealed at the time that the athlete was holed up in a bunker in Kiev with his wife, who was pregnant with the couple's first daughter.

The player and his family managed to escape the bunker and make a two-day journey to Lviv. "It was one of the most difficult moments of my life. The beginning of a real war. We woke up to explosions, like millions of Ukrainians, and hours later we were in a bunker in Kyiv. My wife was pregnant at the time, and that was what scared me most: our daughter, who hadn't even been born yet. The feeling of despair and fear is unforgettable. It was an incredibly difficult period, with so much uncertainty. But I knew I couldn't lose myself. I reminded myself often that this would end, and that when it did, I needed to be ready," Sudakov said in an interview recently published by SoccerBible .