Dhe President of the Ukrainian Paralympic Committee, Valery Sushkevich, worries about the future of disabled sports in his home country. “I fear that parasport will die in Ukraine,” he told the Agence France-Presse news agency on the sidelines of the 24th Deaflympics in Brazil.
The best paraathletes in the world would not know how to continue their sport. Should the Paralympic movement in Ukraine come to a standstill, it would be very difficult to revive it, Sushkevich said. At the Olympic Games for the Deaf, which will be held in Cavias do Sul until May 15, Ukraine clearly leads the medal table with 103 podium places won, 49 of them gold.
However, it is unclear how the Ukrainian parasport will continue. The online news portal “Insidethegames” reports that since the beginning of the war, the Ukrainian government has allegedly withdrawn important funds from the Paralympic program in order to finance the country’s defense.
Because of the war of aggression against Ukraine, Russian and Belarusian athletes were banned from the Deaflympics in March.
