Depth of trauma runs deep
Ukrainian athletes’ fear, anger over war clouds path to Paris
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian diver Stanislav Oliferchyk proudly bears the name of his late grandfather, who died in brutalized Mariupol. Russia’s troops turned the Ukrainian port city into a killing zone in the process of capturing it. The elder Stanislav could no longer get the cancer treatment he needed in the ruins, his grandson says. He was 74 when he died last October.
Another victim of the months-long Russian siege of Mariupol was its gleaming aquatic center. Oliferchyk had planned to use the refurbished sports complex as his training base for the 2024 Paris Olympics. But it was bombed the same day last March as the city’s drama theater. The theater airstrike was the single deadliest known attack against civilians to date in the yearold Russian invasion. An AP investigation determined that close to 600 people died.
So it takes no leap of the imagination to understand why Mariupol-born Oliferchyk is horrified by the idea that he and other war-traumatized Ukrainian athletes might have to put their anger and consciences aside and compete against counterparts from Russia and ally Belarus at next year’s Olympics.
“I’m angry most of the time. I just can’t stand it anymore when shelling happens,” said the 26-year-old Oliferchyk, a European champion in 3-meter mixed synchronized diving in 2019. “I want Russia to let us live in peace and stay away from us.”
Defying fury from Ukraine and misgivings from other nations, the International Olympic Committee is exploring whether to allow Russians and Belarusians back into international sports and the Paris Games. The IOC says it is mission-bound to promote unity and peace — particularly when war is raging. It also cites United Nations human rights experts who argue, on non-discrimination grounds, that athletes and sports judges from Russia and Belarus shouldn’t be banned simply for the passports they hold.
For Ukrainian athletes setting their sights on Paris, the possibility of sharing Olympic pools, fields and arenas with Russian and Belarusian competitors is so repellent that some say they’d not go if it happens.
Sisters Maryna and Vladyslava Aleksiiva — who won Olympic bronze in artistic swimming’s team competition at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 — are among those who say they’d have to boycott.
“We must,” Maryna said during an AP interview at their training pool in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
Russia is the giant of their sport, having won all the gold medals at the last six Games.
Completing each other’s sentences, the Ukrainian twins added: “Our moral feelings don’t allow us to stand near ... these people.”
Oliferchyk worries that enmity could spill over if Ukrainians encounter Russians and Belarusians in Paris — a likely scenario given that Olympians will be housed together.
“Anything can happen, even a fight,” Oliferchyk said. “There simply cannot be any handshakes between us.”
Having to train in the midst of war also puts Ukraine’s Olympic hopefuls at a disadvantage. Russian strikes have destroyed training venues. Air raids disrupt training sessions. Athletes have lost family members and friends, or are consumed by worries that they will. Because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also closed the country’s airspace, traveling to international competitions has become an arduous odyssey — often of long train rides to neighboring Poland, for onward flights from there.
“Our athletes train while missiles ... bombs are flying,” Ukrainian Sports Minister Vadym Guttsait said in an AP interview.
Ukraine’s artistic swim team, including the Aleksiiva sisters, used to train in the Lokomotiv sports center in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city. A Russian strike with powerful S-300 missiles wrecked the complex in September, the region’s governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said at the time. He posted photos showing a giant crater and severe damage to the exterior.
Maryna Aleksiiva said they used to think of the sports center as “our second home.” Their substitute pool in Kyiv doesn’t have the same broad depth of water, making it less suitable for practicing their underwater acrobatics, the sisters said. On a recent morning when they spoke to the AP, air raid sirens interrupted their training and they had to get out of the pool and take refuge in a bomb shelter until the all-clear sounded. The terrors of war also take a mental toll. “Every day we read the news — explosion, explosion, air alert,” Maryna said. “We feel so nervous about our relatives.”
Oliferchyk said he cannot imagine a handshake between Ukrainian and Russian athletes for “the next 50, 100 years.”
The IOC’s possible pathway out of sports exile for Russians and Belarusians would see them compete as “neutral athletes,” without national flags, colors or anthems.
That idea is a non-starter for Ukraine’s sports minister and athletes who resent that would-be Olympians from Russia and Belarus aren’t taking a stand against the invasion.
“They just do nothing and say nothing. And precisely because of their silence, this horror is happening,” Oliferchyk said. “A neutral flag isn’t an option. It’s not possible.”