(FEB 26) 18 year old Matvii Razhba has spent months training for a major national boxing tournament scheduled for two weeks from now and was hoping for a win, the next step toward his dream of boxing for Ukraine in the 2024 Olympics. “At the age of 10 I went into boxing,” he said. “I realized that I could defend the honor of my country in the ring and glorify our beloved Ukraine.”
Razhba attended a social media training with several other boxers that their manager sent them to on Wednesday afternoon at a Kharkiv, Ukraine start-up space just 25 miles from the Russian border. That evening, the group of boxers ended their day in the gym. “Yesterday we trained, prepared for the tournament,” he said. “But now we will prepare to defend our country.”
A three time national boxing champion and the second best light-heavyweight in Europe, Razhba is used to fighting for Ukraine in the ring. Now, if necessary, he’s ready to do so on the battlefield. “We are a very peaceful nation,” Razhba explained. “But if they go to war with us, they will die from it.”
After building up troops along the border for months, Russia began attacking Ukraine at dawn on Thursday morning. As rockets rained on Kyiv, Kharkiv, Uman, and other cities across the country, targeting factories and warehouses and killing dozens in the process, what first seemed unimaginable to many Ukrainians quickly became a reality.
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“I try to drive away all these thoughts and hope everything will be fine,” 19 year old Andrey Skakun had said initially on Tuesday morning when questioned about the situation.
But by early Thursday, Skakun woke up under attack. “I thought everything would somehow pass us by…Me and my family are scared,” he said a couple hours after artillery fire 20 miles away shook his home in Uman, Ukraine. As he hid in the candlelit basement waiting for updates alongside his mother, father, two brothers, sister-in-law, five-year old sister and a family friend, Skakun received a video from a mutual acquaintance named Tassik showing a large explosion on the other side of town. “There are victims,” Tassik later said. He had found them while driving around Uman after the explosion to survey the damage, listening to Wagon Wheel by Darius Rucker from the speakers of his tricked out Chevy and racing down an empty lane towards the city as backed up carloads of people sat in traffic on the other side trying to leave it. His next video showed an off-brand VW Bus painted red white and blue with its windows blown out beside a red bicycle thrown haplessly on the asphalt. Its rider was on the ground next to it – a tarp had been placed over most of their body, but two severed legs that had been fully cut from their green trousers remained visible.
Skakun doesn’t know what comes next. But he knows the life he’s used to is gone for now, and maybe for good. “Now I understand how cool it was,” he said.
He wants to go back and train at the Ares Boxing Club he has grown to love, he wants to have another picnic with his friends alongside the bank of the river that runs through his town, and he wants to enter the ring once again with the Ukrainian flag waving behind him. “Of course I will be proud,” he said before adding: “If I stay alive.” A couple days ago, Skakun had said he was hopeful that his “future in life and in boxing will not be affected.” Now, he’s not even confident he’ll have a future at all. “I want to live,” he said. “Now I understand the expression – happiness isn’t in the money.”
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Given the country’s storied pugilistic history, Mykola Kovalchuk was happy to hear the World Boxing Organization was opening an office in Ukraine last year, and he was even happier when he was selected to be its President. A well-known attorney with an MBA from the University of Edinburgh, Kovalchuk has represented some of the best boxers in the world — all of them from Ukraine. He’s also a political ally of brothers Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko, retired heavyweight boxing World Champions who became two of the country’s most visible figures both in Ukraine and around the globe during their decades of dominance in the sport. The former now serves as the Mayor of Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv and the latter recently enlisted in the Armed Force Reserves to “fight for freedom and democracy,” according to his LinkedIn. As he packed his family up to flee Kyiv for a village in the countryside — leaving the life he’s worked so hard to build behind — Kovalchuk is looking towards God and the fighting spirit of the Ukrainian people to carry them through. “We are the country of winners,” he said amidst an intense bombing campaign on his hometown. “We will fight and win!”
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Roman Shcherbatiuk, a 6’1, 213 pound 2017 world kickboxing champion trains at the end of every day. But now, instead of sparring with the Ukrainian National Team, Shcherbatiuk is planning on running drills with the Cherkasy Territorial Defense Force, a volunteer military unit preparing to defend the country against a full invasion. “It is a question of survival and freedom, and I will fight for my freedom both here and in the ring,” he said. “We do not want war, but we will defend our land to the last breath.”