Memory of fallen Ukrainian athletes honoured in Paris before Olympics

The Association of Ukrainians in France, with the support of the World Congress of Ukrainians, held a peaceful rally in Paris. About a thousand participants marched from Place de la Pantheon to Place Saint-Michel, many of them wearing T-shirts with the names of 450 Ukrainian athletes who died during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The action was joined by Ukrainians, French, Poles, as well as Estonians, Lithuanians, Georgians and Syrians, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"In this way, we were able to show the international scale of the problem, as Russia's aggression is not only about Ukraine, it has affected and made many other countries suffer," says Volodymyr Kohutiak, Vice President of the Union of Ukrainians in France and the World Congress of Ukrainians.

According to him, it was important to show Paris, which will host the Olympics in two weeks, how many Ukrainian athletes who have made great efforts to reach a high level of sportsmanship and have a chance to get to the Olympics will never be able to do so because they were killed by Russia.

Several city councillors and representatives of the Paris City Hall took part in the action. The participants also mentioned Russian and Belarusian athletes who, although under a neutral flag, will still participate in the Olympics.

"It will be extremely difficult for us to see them here at the Games, knowing that they all actually support the Putin regime," adds Kohutiak.

The Ukrainian community also called on the international community to close the Ukrainian skies. Ukrainians promise to continue to put pressure on French politicians to achieve their demands.

Among those honoured with a minute's silence in Paris were boxer Maksym Halinichev, a silver medallist at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires who died at the front, pistol shooter Ivan Bidnyak, who won silver at the European Championships, and Yegor Kigitov, a member of the Ukrainian national team; Stanislav Hulenkov, a 22-year-old judoka whose body was identified 10 months after his death; and weightlifter Oleksandr Peleshenko, who represented Ukraine at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016. An acrobatics coach Anastasia Ihnatenko, her husband and their 18-month-old son were killed in a Russian missile strike on Dnipro.

As reported, 140 athletes will defend Ukraine's honour at the XXXIII Summer Olympics in 2024 in the French capital. They will be represented in 23 events.