Ukrainian boxer Maxim Galinichev recently shone at the Youth Olympic Games and the European Championships, where he also took home gold medals. But his career changed with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The twenty-two-year-old athlete refused to participate in the European championship and voluntarily enlisted in the army instead of boxing. He worked with the paratroopers.
He was wounded twice during the fighting in the Luhansk region, but returned to the front. An attack by Russian troops was fatal for him at the beginning of March, when he fell near Luhansk, Ukrainian media reported with reference to the Ukrainian Boxing Federation (FBU).
“The entire boxing family will remember Maxim forever. The Boxing Federation of Ukraine expresses its sincere condolences to the boxer’s family,” the organization said in a statement.
On March 10, silver medalist of the 2018 Youth Olympics Maksym Galinichev laid down his life for independent Ukraine????️
In the spring of 2022, Maksym refused to participate in the European Boxing Championship and volunteered for the airborne assault troops.
Glory to Hero ???? pic.twitter.com/xQQszWa0tG
— Vladyslav Heraskevych OLY (@heraskevych) March 22, 2023
In previous years, Galinichev won gold at the 2017 European Youth Championship, and a year later he finished second at the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires. A few months before the invasion, he won his last major medal at the 2021 European Under-22 Championships.
In an interview that this graduate of the Kherson Boxing School gave to the FBU website even before the war, he testified that his father introduced him to boxing. And that now he is motivated by the fact that he has become a father himself.
“First of all, there is the desire to secure the future of their children. To make my family proud of me. Despite my young age, I already have my own family. I have a little daughter Vasilisa, she will be two years old in February 2022,” he confided. “It is important for me to achieve my goals in life, to be able to overcome myself. And at the same time remain human.”
He would probably also qualify for next year’s Paris Olympics. However, the sporting event is accompanied by controversial proposals by the International Olympic Committee, which would allow athletes from Belarus and Russia to compete in the event (we wrote more here).
The story of another fallen Ukrainian athlete
Volodymyr Androschuk was the hope of the Ukrainian decathlon. It would have to go very downhill with his form to not qualify for the Olympics in Paris next year.
Androschuk will no longer travel to France. The 22-year-old athlete, who after the Russian invasion of Ukraine voluntarily decided to defend his homeland with a weapon in hand, fell. He died at the end of January in fierce clashes with the Russian occupiers in the village of Jampolivka near Bachmut.
Ukraine and also some Western countries would consider a boycott in such a case. The main argument of Kyiv is precisely the fallen athletes whose careers were cut short by Russian aggression.
According to The Kyiv Independent, more than 200 Ukrainian athletes and their coaches have been killed since the invasion began in February, including 11-year-old rising gymnastics star Kateryna Diachenko.
