Three years after returning to professional football, FC Lokomotyv – Kyiv’s oldest football club – is chasing promotion to Ukraine’s First League while emerging as a symbol of wartime resilience. Founded in 1919 by railway workers as “Zaldor,” the club predates the formation of Moscow’s Lokomotyv. President Oleksandr Yegorov disputes the Soviet-era narrative that the Kyiv side was a subordinate branch of the Russian club, detailing a history of independent identity that began at the Kyiv