Hundreds of sportsmen and women in Ukraine have been killed in the Russian invasion. Some of Ukraine's elite athletes may have been en route to the Paris Olympics today if Russia had not launched its 2022 invasion. Here are profiles of some of those who will not be making the journey to France for the Olympic Games from July 26-August 11.
Volodymyr Androshchuk (2001-2023)
The decathlete first rose to prominence as a member of Ukraine’s under-18 national team. In 2019, he won Ukraine’s Under-20 Championship in the decathlon and in 2020 he represented Ukraine at the European Under-20 contest, placing sixth.
Androshchuk was reportedly preparing to make his bid for the 2024 Olympics but abandoned that dream after the 2022 invasion, volunteering to fight instead. He served in an assault group and was killed near Bakhmut in January 2023.
A friend told journalists at his funeral that "Vova was a very talented athlete and had a super cool character for it. You can’t achieve anything in sports without character, and he had everything needed to win in competitions.”
Maksym Galinichev (2000-2023)
The boxer won in his weight class at the European Youth Championships in 2017, then went on to place second in both the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics and the 2021 European Under-22 Championships. After the full-scale Russian invasion, he put his sporting career on hold and volunteered as a soldier.
Galinichev was killed in action in the Luhansk region of Ukraine in March 2023, leaving behind a wife and 3-year-old daughter. In a 2021 interview, the young sportsman said his biggest motivators were “the desire to provide a future for my children, and to make my family proud of me.”
Halyna Perehudova (2008-2022)
The weightlifting prodigy won gold in her weight class in the Ukrainian Under-17 Championships in 2021 aged just 13. She was a contender for Ukraine’s national weightlifting team, a goal she was actively working toward.
When the full-scale Russian invasion began, her coach, Ihor Obukhov, who trained her in Bakhmut, recalls meeting her at the bus station of the eastern city. Perehudova told him that although her family was in Mariupol she hoped to travel to her grandmother in Kyiv.
Obukhov, who was himself headed to the Ukrainian capital, says, “I thought about taking her with me,” before a bus heading to Mariupol arrived and the girl boarded. She was reportedly killed alongside her mother by shelling as Russian forces encircled Mariupol.
Oleksandr Pielieshenko (1994-2024)
Weightlifter Oleksandr Pielieshenko (above center) was a two-time European champion and competed in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016, placing fourth in his weight category. In 2018, he was suspended from competition after testing positive for a banned substance.
He signed up to fight in the opening days of the 2022 Russian invasion and was killed in an unspecified area of the front in May 2024.
Yevhen Malyshev (2002-2022)
The biathlete participated in the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics, then signed a contract with the Ukrainian military the same year. He was sent to the front to defend Kharkiv following the 2022 Russian invasion and died in battle there on March 1, 2022, one week before his 20th birthday.
Russian and Belarusian teams will not be permitted to compete in the Paris Olympics, but small contingents of individual athletes from the countries will perform as “neutral” athletes. Rules laid out by the International Olympic Committee require “no flag, anthem, colors, or any other identifications” of the two countries involved in the invasion of Ukraine to be displayed or sung.
Russia will reportedly not broadcast the Paris Olympics, in a move similar to the Soviet Union’s boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
