Roughly 500 current and former high-level Ukrainian athletes and coaches have died during the war - one in six of the 3,000 sports figures who have taken up arms. Among the dead are 50 athletes and coaches who were civilians and died in airstrikes or were killed in another defenseless manner. Ukraine’s 2024 Olympic team will carry a spirit of defiance and resilience to the Paris Games beginning Friday to “show the world that we continue to keep fighting on all fronts, that Ukraine is not finished.”On a rest day from the war in Ukraine, Volodymyr Androshchuk went out for sushi. In a cheap car, recently purchased, he drove his squad leader to a supermarket a short distance from the eastern front. They ate at a safe house and shared a small bottle of Cognac.
“We were so happy, it was crazy,” said the squad leader, Volodymyr Dziubynsky.
But later that night, Jan. 24, 2023, Androshchuk sounded worried over the phone, his girlfriend and his sister said. He and Dziubynsky were members of Ukraine’s elite 95th Air Assault Brigade. The next day’s mission against Russian forces, he confided in encrypted conversations, would be carried out in terrain with no trees and almost no place for cover.
At 22, Androshchuk was not yet of draft age, which was then 27. He had trained as a sportsman, not a soldier, competing in the decathlon, a gantlet of 10 running, jumping and throwing events. He set out to represent Ukraine in the 2024 Olympics in Paris or the 2028 Games in Los Angeles. By the time Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, however, injuries had mostly sidelined Androshchuk. So he volunteered to represent his country wearing the camouflage of a battlefield unit, no longer in the blue and yellow of a national sports uniform.
His enlistment was a benefit to the nation’s army but a risk to its sporting life: Roughly 500 current and former high-level Ukrainian athletes and coaches have died during the war, according to the country’s Olympic committee and sports ministry. That’s about one in six of the 3,000 sports figures who have taken up arms — some of whom, like Androshchuk, were sent to the front lines with only a month’s training. Among the dead are 50 athletes and coaches who were civilians and died in airstrikes or were killed in another defenseless manner. Their deaths are being investigated as possible war crimes, Ukraine’s deputy prosecutor general said at a news conference in late June in Kyiv, the capital.
Ukraine’s 2024 Olympic team will carry a spirit of defiance and resilience to the Paris Games beginning Friday and hopes of winning 15 to 20 medals. Yaroslava Mahuchikh, 22, a gold medal favorite in the women’s high jump, said it is important to “show the world that we continue to keep fighting on all fronts, that Ukraine is not finished.”
But stories like Androshchuk’s — of promising athletes going off to war — will be a reminder of what the Ukrainian Olympic movement has sacrificed.
“You want to have some rest, but you hear air-raid sirens all the time and every day you read the news and this guy died, that guy died,” said Olha Golodna, 32, a two-time Olympian in the shot-put. “There is not a single person in Ukraine who doesn’t have someone close who died.”
‘Golden Child’
In Suslivtsi, a tiny village of wheat, soybean and barley fields in western Ukraine, Androshchuk’s name is ritually mentioned during outdoor physical education classes at his hometown school, said Tetiana Prus, 65, the school’s director. “A golden child,” she called Androshchuk. “A great student, always first place in sports competitions.”
He was in sixth grade when a local coach noticed his speed and sent him to train nearby in the town of Letychiv. The modest stadium there has a cinder running track and a sandy pit for long jumping. Intrigued, Androshchuk also began to throw the shot-put and the javelin. He moved to a sports school near Kyiv and began to excel in the decathlon.
His results were promising. In 2018 and 2019, he won national junior championships in the event, and in 2020, he finished sixth at a European junior competition in a condensed version of the decathlon called the heptathlon.
But Androshchuk hurt his back in an awkward landing while pole-vaulting in 2020. He began to sleep with a ball or a bottle beneath his back to try to ease the pain. Sometimes he slept on the floor. He scaled back from 10 events to one, trying to become one of Ukraine’s top javelin throwers. Four months after the war began, Androshchuk began dating Alina Zhuravska, then 17. She liked his easygoing nature, though on occasion he was so calm it irritated her. “Sometimes you want a man to slam his hand on the table,” she said in an interview.
She noticed, too, that he seemed adrift, unfulfilled, working in the carpentry shop of a furniture factory while continuing to try to train as an athlete. He was proud of his friends’ sporting accomplishments, but felt deflated that his back left him unable to compete at the highest level. He donated his javelin and discus to the youth sports school in Letychiv.
Volunteering for the Fight
Androshchuk had considered joining Ukraine’s armed forces when the war began but was discouraged by his family. They even tried to hide his documents, according to Zhuravska, who like most of those interviewed for this story spoke through an interpreter. Later, she learned, he brought his medals to a military recruitment center and said: “I’m a good runner. You should take me.” A friendly doctor, he told her, gave him medical clearance despite his faulty back.
In mid-September 2022, Artur Felfner, who will represent Ukraine in the javelin throw at the Paris Olympics, spent five days with Androshchuk in Letychiv. Photographs show them laughing, having a good time. But Felfner, 20, recalled that Androshchuk said he was “not providing any value” in civilian life. He would join the military. “At least there, I will have some value." This was in keeping with Androshchuk’s character, according to those who knew him. He was kind, funny, and possessed a sense of justice that did not permit the mocking of lesser athletes. But when he made a decision, he moved forward without a reverse gear.
“He was easily ignited,” said his sister, Liudmyla Androshchuk, now 27. “He was always searching for some extreme adrenaline activity.”
But not until the day before Androshchuk signed up in mid-October 2022 did he inform his girlfriend of his plans.
Zhuravska broke down crying. Her father, Vitaly, and her brother, Vadym, had both died fighting in the war, and she had promised herself she wouldn’t get involved with a soldier and risk losing someone else close to her. Now her boyfriend was joining the 95th Air Assault Brigade, the same outfit in which her brother lost his life. Androshchuk assured her that he would not be going to the front line. She tried to tell herself that everything would be fine.
Liudmyla Androshchuk recalled a similar “don’t worry” story. But a month later, her brother was fighting with the Second Battalion, Sixth Company, of the 95th Brigade. “It wasn’t enough training,” she said. “But Volodymyr said you could learn more in combat than in training camp.”
A Fateful Mission
Androshchuk was a grenade launcher, but he learned to handle numerous weapons. His lean athletic build had filled out. He wore a beard. And he found a comrade who shared his athletic background: Volodymyr Dziubynsky, then 26, a former member of Ukraine’s national rowing team.
They met during training in October 2022 and joined the same brigade and assault group. Dziubynsky became a squad leader; Androshchuk, he said, was his second in command. Their athletic training gave them resilience and reliability, Dziubynsky said, as they skirmished with Russian forces in villages, forests and fields. They were tall, strong men who carried the dead and wounded from the battlefield and shared everything, Dziubynsky said, even a supply of new underwear that Androshchuk received.
“He performed each task as if it were the last time, like an athlete,” Dziubynsky said. “Somehow we were always lucky." After a battle on Jan. 10, 2023, his 22nd birthday, Androshchuk somberly told his sister and his girlfriend that he had been “up to my elbows in blood.”
Two weeks later, the day he went for sushi, he sent a flurry of videos to his sister, several of himself in full battle gear, including a balaclava that depicted a skeleton face. In another, wearing civilian clothes, Androshchuk joked, “That’s me, so cute with this short beard.” That evening, though, he expressed concern about the next day’s mission.
Early on Jan. 25, 2023, Androshchuk responded to a voice message from Zhuravska, his girlfriend. They had talked in recent weeks of starting a family. Her mother bought her a ring, and Androshchuk suggested she wear it as an engagement ring. He was due for a leave in February. “Love you, Kitty,” he replied, in part, adding heart emojis. “I hope it will be soon.” The message was sent at 3:04 a.m.
This was Androshchuk’s usual time to awaken and prepare for a day’s mission. That day, Dziubynsky said, they would attack Russian troops between the eastern cities of Yampolivka and Kreminna. The objective was for 25 members in the 95th’s assault team to crawl 300 meters to a hill, he said, and then cover another 150 meters to storm the enemy positions.
Androshchuk made coffee and smoked a cigarette, Dziubynsky said. He listened to music in his headphones on an armored personnel carrier ride to the team’s drop-off point. “Relax, everything will be fine,” he told Dziubynsky, who replied, “If you are with me, everything will be fine." At 6 a.m., the assault team arrived at its designated position and set off on foot. But the Russians had captured two Ukrainian trenches during the night. The Ukrainians were surprised to see 40 to 50 people charging at them. Snipers and machine guns began firing. “It was almost as if someone had told them what we were going to do,” Dziubynsky said.
The first firefight lasted three hours. The Ukrainians ran out of ammunition and had to resupply. A tank was sent forward in support, but it seemed a mistake to Dziubynsky as the assault team came under fire from mortars, tanks, rocket-propelled grenades, antitank weapons and drones that dropped grenades.
“When the Russians heard the tank, they started shooting with everything they had,” he said.
Dazed after a blast, Dziubynsky came out of his trench and found Androshchuk lying atop a comrade with blood on his cheek and temple. He had been hit by shrapnel from an antitank rocket. Less than three months after joining the 95th Brigade, he died of what a military doctor wrote was “explosive trauma.“I started crying even though I knew I shouldn’t,” Dziubynsky said.
Of the 25 members of the assault team, five were killed and nine wounded, he said. As reinforcements arrived, the casualties were evacuated. He and Androshchuk had made a promise. If one died, the other would take him home to his family.
Liudmyla Androshchuk learned of her brother’s death the next day when she found an Instagram photo of him standing with four comrades. All five had been killed or wounded. “R.I.P. guys,” the caption said.
That same day, unable to reach her boyfriend and fearing the worst, Zhuravska got a Cyrillic V tattooed on her left forearm. After she left the tattoo parlor, she said, she received a call from a cousin of Androshchuk’s: “Volodymyr’s gone.”
‘Time Plays Tricks With You’
An Orthodox funeral was held on a snowy day in Letychiv. Androshchuk was buried in military camouflage. A yellow ribbon signifying the Holy Trinity was draped across his forehead. His mother, Valentyna, and his sister, Liudmyla, held slender candles and cried.
Androshchuk’s sports uniform was placed near the open coffin.
“It’s terrible, he was so young,” said Yaroslav Bohdan, 26, a former decathlete and training partner of Androshchuk’s who attended the funeral. “He didn’t live enough of his life.” A few months after his friend’s death, Dziubynsky severely injured his left leg in a battle upon being struck by a shard from tank fire. The leg was amputated above the knee. Now 28, he has been discharged from the military and has resumed his rowing career, aiming to compete in the 2028 Paralympics in Los Angeles.
Androshchuk was posthumously awarded a medal for courage. The flag of the 95th Brigade flies at his gravesite. At his old school in Suslivtsi, students keep fresh flowers in a vase beneath a plaque that honors him.
Zhuravska wears a bracelet with a Cyrillic V for the first names of the father, the brother and the boyfriend she lost: Vitaly, Vadym and Volodymyr. Her psychologist, she said, advised that she quit wearing the preliminary engagement ring her mother had given her. Zhuravska wanted to become a paramedic in the military and recently graduated from nursing school at 19, but now she seeks a job that is safer, that will not risk leaving her mother all alone. She would like to open a beauty salon. “Sometimes, I don’t believe it,” she said, sitting outside a cafe on a sunny morning in June in Khmelnytskyi in western Ukraine. “Time plays tricks with you. It seems only yesterday that you saw them. I don’t know how I survived it. It’s for them and their memory.
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