Meet Ukraine athletes who have joined war to save homeland from Russian forces
Categories: FOREIGN COUNTRIES
Pidruchnyi is a world champion in biathlon, which combines skiing and shooting, and a three-time Olympian. He returned home from Beijing last week just before Russia launched its invasion of his country.
Pidruychnyi also made a memorial statement for Yevhen Malyshev, a 19-year-old former athlete on Ukraine's junior biathlon team. The exact circumstances of Malyshev's death are unclear, but the International Biathlon Union said Wednesday he "died this week serving in the Ukrainian military."
Former boxing world champion Vasyl Lomachenko has joined a territorial defense unit, he posted on social media, and world heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk has also been pictured holding a rifle.
Usyk is originally from Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.Figure skater Olga Mikutina was born in Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv, near the Russian border. The city has come under heavy assaults from Russian air and ground forces.
While competing for Austria at the Olympics, the 18-year-old skater said she was trying to block out thoughts of the military buildup near her home city. Now after the invasion, she is posting pictures of the damage to Kharkiv and what she terms a 'call for Russian rebellion' against President Vladimir Putin.