Paris march in memory of Ukrainian athletes killed in the Russian war

“It will be very difficult for us to see a certain number of Russian and Belarusian athletes more or less openly supporting the Putin regime, even if their flag will be white,” said Volodymyr Kogutyak, vice president of the Union of Ukrainians in France.

“And that is the saddest thing for us,” he told AFP. “That Ukrainian athletes who built careers in sports have died and cannot come to these Olympic Games. And at the same time, some of those who support the murderers will take part.”

Since the Russian attack in February 2022, around 450 top Ukrainian athletes have died on the battlefield, the organizers of the march said.

Among them is Maksym Halinichev, a boxer and silver medalist at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games, who joined the Ukrainian army and died at the front in 2023.

Other victims included shooters Ivan Bidnyak and Yehor Kihitov, judo champion Stanislav Hulenkov, weightlifter Oleksandr Pielieshenko and gymnastics coach Anastasia Ihnatenko, who was killed by a Russian missile along with her husband and 18-month-old child.

“We want the world to understand that Russia is a terrorist,” said Olga Krushkovska, a 33-year-old Ukrainian architect and artist who now lives in France.

“The situation is very painful for me, for my children, for my family and for our country,” she told AFP at the march. “We want the world to boycott everything that has to do with Russia, especially in connection with the Olympic Games.”

Roman Tyshchenko, who recently completed his master’s degree, also said at the march that he was “angry” when he thought about the deceased Ukrainian athletes. The 28-year-old added, however, that he did not want to make “a distinction between the athletes and all the other people” who had been killed.

“I’m just angry that people are dying, and I feel like people abroad don’t always understand that the war is still going on,” he said.

Ukraine is expected to send more than 100 athletes to the Paris Games.

The International Olympic Committee has decided that Russian and Belarusian athletes cannot compete for their country, but are eligible to participate as so-called neutral individual athletes.

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