Kyiv – Ukrainian diver Stanislav Oliferchyk proudly bears the name of his late grandfather, who died brutally Mariupol. Russia’s troops turned the Ukrainian port city into a death zone in the process of acquisition. The older Stanislav could no longer get the cancer treatment he needed in the ruins, says his grandson. He died last October at the age of 74.
Another victim of the months-long Russian siege of Mariupol was its brilliant aquatic center. Oliferchyk had planned the mission the renovated sports complex as his training base for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. But it was bombed on the same day as the city’s playhouse last March. The theater air raid was the deadliest known attack against civilians to this day in the years old Russian invasion. A Investigating the Associated Press found that almost 600 people died.
So it doesn’t take any imagination to understand why Mariupol-born Oliferchyk is horrified by the idea that he and others war traumatized Ukrainian athletes may need to put their anger and conscience aside and compete against colleagues from Russia and ally Belarus at the Olympic Games next year.
“Most of the time I’m angry. I just can’t take it anymore when it comes to grenades,” said 26-year-old Oliferchyk, European Champion in 3 meter mixed synchronized jumping in 2019. “I want Russia to let us live in peace and stay away from us.”
defy Anger from Ukraine And To ponder from other nations, the International Olympic Committee is examining whether Russians and Belarusians should be allowed back into international sport and to the Paris Games. The says the IOC it is commissioned to promote unity and peace – especially when war is raging. It also quotes United Nations human rights experts who arguefor reasons of non-discrimination, that athletes and sports judges from Russia and Belarus should not be banned just because of the passports they hold.
For Ukrainian athletes targeting Paris, the opportunity to share Olympic pools, fields and arenas with Russian and Belarusian competitors is so off-putting that some say they wouldn’t go if it did.
Sisters Maryna and Vladyslava Aleksiiva – who won Olympic bronze in artistic swimming team competition at the Tokyo 2021 Olympics – are among those who say they must boycott.
“We have to,” Maryna said during an interview with the Associated Press at her training pool in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.
Russia has won the giant of its sport, formerly called synchronized swimming all gold medals at the past six Olympic Games.
Completing each other’s sentences, the Ukrainian twins added, “Our moral feelings don’t allow us to be around … these people.”
Oliferchyk fears hostility could spill over when Ukrainians meet Russians and Belarusians in Paris – a likely scenario given that Olympians are housed in lodgings overlooking the Seine in the city’s northern suburbs and eat together.
“Anything can happen, even a fight,” said Oliferchyk. “There just can’t be a handshake between us.”
Training in the middle of the war also puts Ukraine’s Olympic hopes at a disadvantage. Russian strikes have destroyed training facilities. Airstrikes disrupt training sessions. Athletes have lost family members and friends, or are consumed by the worry that they will. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also closed the country’s airspace, travel to international competitions has become an arduous odyssey – often involving long train journeys to neighboring Poland to fly onward.
“Our athletes are training while cruise missiles are flying, bombs are flying,” said Ukraine’s Sports Minister Vadym Guttsait in an AP interview.
He recalled a meeting he attended between IOC President Thomas Bach and Ukrainian cyclists who had found refuge in Switzerland.
“Bach asked one of the cyclists how she was doing,” said the minister. “She started to cry. He asked why. She said that that day they (Russian forces) attacked her town where her parents were and she was very nervous.”
“That’s how every athlete thinks about what’s happening in Ukraine,” the minister said.
The artistic swimming team of Ukraine, including the Aleksiiva sisters, used to train at the Lokomotiv Sports Center in Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city. A Russian attack using powerful S-300 missiles destroyed the complex in September, the region’s then-governor Oleh Syniehubov said. He posted photos showing a huge crater and severe damage to the outside.
Maryna Aleksiiva said they used to consider the sports center “our second home”. Their replacement pool in Kiev does not have the same great depth of water, making it less suitable for practicing their underwater acrobatics, the sisters said. Speaking to the AP the other morning, air-raid sirens interrupted their practice and they had to get out of the pool and flee to an air-raid shelter until the all-clear was sounded.
The power also went out for a short time. Russia has been systematically bombing Ukraine’s power infrastructure for months. When attacks knock out the pool’s heater, the water gets so cold that the sisters train in full-body wetsuits—far from ideal for their sleek sport.
“It’s hard to move,” said Vladyslava.
The horrors of war also take a mental toll.
“Every day we read the news – blast, blast, air alert,” Maryna said. “We are so nervous about our relatives.”
Oliferchyk said he couldn’t imagine a handshake between Ukrainian and Russian athletes “in the next 50, 100 years.”
The Neptun Arena in Mariupol, where he planned to train for Paris, was destroyed by a Russian strike on March 16. Just as Mariupol’s drama theater was destroyed that day, civilians in the sports complex sought shelter from bombing. Including pregnant women who had moved there after a devastating Russian strike last week a city maternity hospital. Video posted on Facebook from the region’s governor showed the Neptune’s shattered front and a gaping hole in her roof.
The possible path of the IOC from sports exile because Russians and Belarusians would see them compete as “neutral athletes” with no national flags, colors, or anthems.
That idea is out of the question for Ukraine’s sports minister, and athletes who resent the failure of would-be Olympians from Russia and Belarus to oppose the invasion.
“They just do nothing and say nothing. And it is precisely because of their silence and inaction that all this horror is happening,” Oliferchyk said. “A neutral flag is not an option. It is not possible.”
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine And https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine-a-year-of-war
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