Sixteen days ago, Oleksandr Abramenko was in China. There he won his silver medal, the only one of any kind won by Ukraine at the Beijing Winter Games.
Abramenko, one of the best freestyle skiers, a five-time Olympian and the country’s flag-bearer at the opening ceremony, drew more attention after the event, when a photo of him hugging a Russian rival surfaced.
Friday night in Kiev, Abramenko, 33, was in the parking lot of his apartment building with his wife Alexandra and their two-year-old son Dmitry.. It was his seventh night sleeping in the garage, considering it safer than his apartment on the 20th floor, not far from the city’s main airport.
“We spend the night in the underground car park, because the air raid siren is constantly on.”Abramenko wrote during the exchange. “It is scary to sleep in the apartment, I myself saw from the window how the air defense systems worked with enemy missiles, and loud explosions were heard”.
On Friday, in the midst of the struggle to leave Kiev, Abramenko knew that the time had come to leave, heading for an unknown future.. The family planned to drive on Saturday to the far west of Ukraine, near the borders with Slovakia and Hungary. In the best case, it could take 10 hours. “I plan to go with my coach, Enver Ablaev, who lives in Mukachevo, in the Transcarpathian region”Abramenko said. “I go by car, I take the essential things, the food and my Olympic medals.”
Abramenko’s goal is to reach Mukachevo “to think about my next steps”. He does not know if his wife and his son will cross the border as refugees, like more than a million Ukrainians. He only knows that, like all men his age, he cannot leave the Ukraine. “I don’t know if I will go to war or not, I don’t know what process the boys who are called up are going through,” he wrote. “At the moment, our army is facing the offensives of Russian soldiers and equipment”.