Yevheniy Korinets could never have imagined that he would one day represent Ukraine at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. Just three years ago, this jovial young man was still working as a physiotherapist at a rehabilitation centre for children with musculoskeletal disorders in Zhytomyr, 140 kilometres west of kyiv. His career on a regional volleyball team had ended abruptly a few years earlier due to an injury. Like hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, he joined the army on 24 February 2022: “A duty”, according to him. A little over a year later, a mine exploded in his trench near Bakhmut in Donbass. His left leg had to be amputated: thus began the long road to reconstruction.
A call from his former coach convinced him to join the Paralympic sitting volleyball team in early 2024. “It’s a completely new sport for me. The size of the court, the height of the net, the movements, everything is very different,” Yevheniy, who is one of 140 Ukrainian athletes in Paris – the largest delegation from independent Ukraine – told L’Express. “Participating in the Paralympic Games is a way to get our country talked about around the world, to show that we continue to fight on all fronts, despite the difficulties of the war. It’s another way to defend Ukraine,” he says.
Ukrainian athletes are all the more motivated by the fact that 90 Russians are participating under a neutral banner in the competitions, despite Kiev’s intense campaign to prevent it. In a sign of the general malaise, Oleksandr Komarov, a swimmer from the Donetsk region who won bronze in the 200-meter freestyle (in the S5 category), refused to have his photo taken on the podium with Russian silver medalist Kirill Pulver. “We all know that this is neutrality on paper,” he snapped. The next day he won Ukraine’s first gold medal and broke the world record in the 100-meter freestyle.
War continues during the Paralympics
Oleksandr Komarov, who was already using a wheelchair, nearly died during the siege of Mariupol by the Russian army (at least 25,000 dead and 95% of the buildings in the port city destroyed). “I have been abroad for two and a half years now, training alone, with my remote coach, who is also from Mariupol, but who has fled to free Ukraine,” the 37-year-old athlete told a Ukrainian media outlet. The president of the Ukrainian Paralympic Committee, Valery Sushkevich, also did not hide his indignation: “Russia, once again, is waging wars […] “despite the Olympic truce,” he lashed out. “She does it in a particularly cynical way during the Paralympic Games, because the consequence of any war is that thousands and thousands of people end up with a disability.”
In this dramatic context, the fervor of the Olympic Games continues in Ukraine with the Paralympics. All over the country, posters with portraits of para-athletes and this message have flourished: “The will to win.” The competition has a particular resonance in this country where disabled sports continue to develop, as the number of wounded increases. Between 20,000 and 50,000 Ukrainians have had to have limbs amputated since 2022 due to a war injury, according to various estimates by NGOs. “After an injury, a soldier must continue to live despite physical limitations, to find meaning in his life. It is difficult to find motivation, when the adrenaline of war suddenly stops, explains Yevheniy, the volleyball player. Sport replaces this lack of adrenaline and helps wounded fighters to socialize.”
In a stadium in the center of kyiv, a dozen athletes play football, supported by crutches. These veterans meet twice a week, at the initiative of the Ukrainian Football Association. The atmosphere is good-natured, the game very technical. Prosthetics lie on the edge of the field, smaller than normal, where two teams of six players, all on one leg, compete. Except the goalkeepers, who have had one arm amputated.
Making new friends
Volodymyr Samous leaps with ease on his crutches, jumping on his one leg, virtuously avoids defenders, approaches the goal and shoots. The forty-year-old has been living with a prosthesis for two years after an injury in Avdiivka in July 2022. Once a week, he travels 320 kilometers from his town of Hloukhiv, 10 kilometers from the Russian border, in the Sumy region, to come and play with the team. “I appreciate this moment which allows me to breathe, to disconnect a little from reality. Lately, where I live, the Russians have been bombing us every day,” he says. After his day in the capital, Volodymyr will return to his village a little more destroyed by the war. “There are other wounded people there, but many have been sent back to the front,” he reports. “I was exempted because the amputation is high: I am often unbalanced when the ground is not flat or on snow. But if the amputation is below the knee, you go back to the front.” [NDLR : avec une prothèse].”
For the past two years, the veteran has been passionately involved in football and has been taking part in international competitions. The country has had a team for amputees since 1999, and new regional teams have been forming since 2022. Dmytro Rjondkovskyi, the disabled sports coach at the Ukrainian federation, hopes to launch a national competition soon. “Leading training sessions and developing this sport is my way of thanking our heroes, those who fought for our country on the battlefield and now represent it on the pitch,” he says. He adds: “It’s good for their physical fitness, but also their mental health – because they can get in touch with people who are going through similar experiences, make new friends.” When there are several people, it’s also easier to defuse the situation with humor. “The other day, two of our best players went to the sports store to buy shoes for a European competition. One took the right shoe and the other the left. They came back saying it was a good deal!” laughs Dmytro.
Physically, the benefits are undeniable. “Football helps strengthen the muscles in the arms, back, balance, but above all I feel more confident when I walk with my prosthesis because my good leg is much stronger,” says Olha Benda, who lost the other one in Donbass in 2017. This hopeful of Ukrainian football will participate in the World Cup in Colombia in November with the newly created women’s team. And until then, he will attend the training center in Lviv, in the west of the country, set up after the start of the war, which also serves as a rehabilitation center for wounded soldiers.
Like most para-athletes, Olha has observed a change in the attitude of the population, which the conflict has accustomed to seeing seriously injured people. “I have never hidden my prosthesis, on the contrary. In 2017, people, especially children, would turn around in the street and point at me. Today, this is no longer the case at all: parents educate their children, and day after day, I see more and more respect in their eyes,” notes Olha. “The way we are looked at has changed because the nation has changed,” adds Lina, the only player on the team whose disability is not linked to the war but to a birth defect. “That is the only virtue of war,” she continues. “In a way, it makes society more tolerant.”
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