Audiences from across the world tuning into the Olympics kicking off with this Friday's opening ceremony in Paris should, as they enjoy the show, be conscious of why Ukraine will not be fully represented this summer – and at future athletic competitions.
Among the tens of thousands of Ukrainians killed by Russia's full-scale invasion launched more than two years ago are 488 Ukrainian athletes and coaches, according to Ukraine's Youth and Sports Ministry.
"Every athlete killed by Russia is a tragedy for the entire (Ukrainian) sports family," Ukraine's acting sports and youth minister Matvii Bidnyi said at a press conference ahead of the Olympic games.
"These crimes are not only targeting our sports, but it is also an aggressor's attempt to attack our national identity," he added.
Some Ukrainian athletes, titled and promising young ones, as well as coaches, were killed by Russian air strikes or were shot by the Russian military in occupied territories.
Others have died in battle after shedding their sports gear for army uniforms to defend their homeland against an invader that has been open about the intent to destroy Ukraine as a nation and independent people.
None of them will ever be able to represent Ukraine on the international level again or train a new generation of talented athletes, except those who suffered serious injuries and will, as a result, stand a chance of representing Ukraine in future Paralympic games.
According to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), 15 Russians and 17 Belarusians will participate in the Paris Olympics. They will compete as "individual neutral athletes" only in individual disciplines and will not be allowed to use any national symbols related to their countries.
Both states earned much more place quotas to compete in Paris, but the International Olympic Committee did not allow dozens of athletes to participate, as they were affiliated with the military and security forces of Russia and Belarus or supported Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Among the Ukrainian athletes killed by Russia's war are thirteen European and world champions. At least 50 athletes were killed in acts that amount to war crimes committed by Russian troops during the occupation of Ukrainian territories, the ministry said.
Here are some of them.
Fedir Yepifanov
Several Ukrainian athletes joined the military at a very young age. Fencer Fedir Yepifanov joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces when he turned 18, the legal age to serve in the military in Ukraine.
A promising fencer, Yepifanov, a multiple medalist and winner of national competitions, began his service from the first days of the full-scale invasion.
In 2022, he suffered a gunshot wound but later returned to service. In December 2023, Yepifanov was killed by a Russian first-person-view (FPV) drone in the village of Verbove in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. He was one month away from turning 20 years old.
"Fedir's whole life was ahead of him if not for the Russian invaders who started the war," his fencing friend Yaroslav Zlyi wrote on Facebook.
Volodymyr Androshchuk
Decathlete Volodymyr Androshchuk was a member of the Ukrainian national track and field team and a champion of Ukraine in the U20 age group. In the same age group, he took sixth place at the 2020 European Championships.
Androshchuk was preparing to compete for Ukraine at the 2024 Paris Olympics, but when the full-scale war broke out, he left his sports career and signed a contract with the army. He served in an assault group.
Aged 22, he was killed on Jan. 25, 2023, in the battles near the village of Yampolivka in Donetsk Oblast.
"He gave his young life for the sake of another dream of his – to see Ukraine as an unconquered, free, independent European state with a decent life for its long-suffering people," Androshchuk's native Letychiv community in Khmelnytskyi Oblast wrote in his memory.
Maksym Galinichev
Galinichev refused to participate in the European Boxing Championships in May 2022 and joined the airborne assault troops of Ukrainian forces. Galinichev was wounded twice but returned to service. He was killed at the age of 22 on March 10, 2023, during combat operations in Luhansk Oblast.
During his boxing career, Maksym won silver at the 2018 Youth Olympics in the 56 kg weight category. In 2017, he became the European Youth Champion, and in 2021, he won a silver medal at the European U22 Boxing Championships.
"First and foremost, I was motivated (to continue my sports career) by the desire to provide a future for my children, to make my family proud of me," Galinichev said in an interview with the Ukrainian Boxing Federation a few months before the outbreak of the all-out war.
"Despite my young age, I already have my own family. I have a little daughter, Vasilisa, who will turn two in February (2022)."
Oleksandr Pielieshenko
Weightlifter Oleksandr Pielieshenko joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2022. Russia's full-scale invasion was his second direct experience of war, as in 2014, he was forced to leave his homeland in Luhansk Oblast due to the first Russian invasion that year that saw it occupy parts of the eastern Donbas region and Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
Despite serving in the army, Pielieshenko, a two-time European champion and finalist at the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics, hoped to return to his athletic career, wrote the Angels of Sport project, a requiem for fallen Ukrainian athletes.
But this wish remained unfulfilled.
The weightlifter was killed on May 5, 2024, during combat in eastern Ukraine.
Alina Perehudova
Several Ukrainian athletes died in the Russian 2022 siege upon the Azov Sea port city of Mariupol, which has been occupied and almost destroyed by Russian troops since May 2022. Among those athletes was 14-year-old Alina Perehudova.
Weightlifter Perehudova became Ukraine's champion in the U17 age group when she was only 13. Despite her young age, the athlete was already on the list of candidates for the national team.
A training camp involving Perehunova was supposed to begin on Feb. 25, 2022. But then the full-scale invasion started.
The weightlifter's coach, Ihor Obukhov, told the Ukrainian media outlet Obozrevatel that he met Alina at the bus station on the way to her relatives in Mariupol at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. On Feb. 28, 2022, Perehudova stopped contacting him.
Later, Obukhov learned from a relative of the weightlifter that she had been killed.
"She and her mother Natalia went outside and were hit by shell fragments. They both died at the scene. Kostya, Alina's brother, ran out after them and was killed by a sniper. There was only one grandmother left there (in Mariupol). We do not know her fate,” Obukhov said.
Ivan Bidniak
Shooter Ivan Bidniak, aged 36, was a member of Ukraine's national team.
At the 50th anniversary World Shooting Championships, he took seventh place and was the first to win an Olympic quota place for Ukraine to compete at the London 2012 Olympics. A year after the Olympics, Bidniak won a silver and bronze medal at the European Championships.
As soon as Russia’s full-blown invasion started, Bidniak returned from abroad, where he had been working, and volunteered for the front. He served in Kherson Oblast and was shot dead by the Russian military, according to the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine’s department in Lviv Oblast.
Bidniak’s son was six years old at the time.
Stanislav Hulenkov
Judoka Stanislav Hulenkov, a European Junior Cup medalist and winner of national competitions among cadets and youth, joined the ranks of Ukrainian border guards in 2021.
Hulenkov, a native of Lutsk, a Ukrainian city near the Polish border, hoped to combine his sports career with service.
In April 2023, Hulenkov went missing near the village of Novokalynove in Donetsk Oblast. The remains of the 22-year-old judoka were identified only 10 months later.
Vadym Chernov, a close judo friend of Hulenkov, told Reuters that he tried to convince him to apply for leave from the army to attend the Ukrainian Cup, which took place in early May 2023. Hulenkov refused and went missing a few weeks before the tournament.
"He told me: 'I cannot leave my brothers,'" Chernov said.
In memory of his friend, Chernov carries a badge with Hulenkov's name on it to judo competitions.
Kateryna Hodunova
