AAt the near end of the pool hangs a banner depicting a soldier standing in a golden cornfield under a bright blue sky. Behind him stretches a column of tanks and above him flies a national flag, meant to mimic the essential elements of the scene. “I believe in the Armed Forces, Glory to Ukraine!” is the accompanying slogan. Below, as the image catches the early morning light, Mykhailo Serbin climbs in and drives down the middle lane.
Serbin glides through the water with the speed and grace you’d expect from one of the world’s best para-swimmers. At the end of each lap, he’s guided by poles held out by staff so he knows when it’s time to turn back. His local swimming pool in Kharkiv was destroyed by Russian bombs; it’s been an adjustment living and training here in Kamianske, a dormitory town in Dnipro, alongside a group of athletes forced to leave their homes.
“We had no hopes, no expectations,” says Serbin of those months after Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. “Would we get a salary? Would our fees be paid? It was all uncertain. We lived from one day to the next and were just starting training. You couldn’t know what would happen tomorrow.”
Despite all the uncertainty and excitement, he will be competing in Paris over the next two weeks. He hopes to defend his Paralympic title in the 100m backstroke S11 category, which is for swimmers who are almost completely blind, and can also build on a silver medal in the 200m individual medley. At 20 years of age, he has an impressive track record, with his most recent successes including a gold medal at last year’s World Championships in Madeira.
“The first goal is to prove to yourself that you have not worked in vain over the past few years,” he says of the task ahead. “The next is to make sure that people do not forget the Ukrainians, who are such a strong people.”
It is remarkable that Serbin and his teammates, some of whom speak to him about Ukraine’s preparations for the Paralympics, have made it this far. The fog of uncertainty that overshadowed parasports in the country two and a half years ago was fierce: budgets were initially slashed as state funds were diverted to the army, and a formidable machine struggled to stay afloat. Ukraine finished fifth in the rankings at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics with 95 medals, including two from Serbin. This is one of the best parasports constellations in the world, but it has had to stretch its resources to the limit to make it to Paris this summer.
Anton Kol, a four-time Paralympic medalist in the backstroke in the S1 category for athletes with limited mobility of the arms and legs, speaks matter-of-factly about the shell that struck 60 meters from his house on the outskirts of Dnipro. It was April 2 this year and he was walking in the front yard with his young son. “The windows were blown out,” he explains. Around the corner, a swimming pool where Kol trained daily was damaged: a visit the same day reveals that it is fully operational again and children are attending an afternoon class there, but the exterior of the facility is clearly damaged and there is a large crater across the street.
Faced with such a close decision, no one can be inscrutable. But Kol, a local national hero at 34, who was abandoned by his mother at birth and grew up in an orphanage, took part in the European Championships in Madeira less than three weeks later and won gold in the 100-metre race. “We had to adapt to the conditions,” he says. “When rockets hit residential areas, people were so united. This city always thrives.”
Kol has had a parallel successful career as a home designer, although he says that outside of sport he now devotes himself to social initiatives and looking after his family. He has overcome enormous obstacles to get here. He cites sport as a means of overcoming depression he had at a young age and is one of the lucky ones while others fell through the cracks of society with his disability. War is another challenge we have to face. “Each of us has taken our own path,” he says of the Ukrainian Paralympic team. “But the strength of our spirit is great.”
Another Ukrainian swimmer is Andrii Trusov, who has won five medals in Tokyo, among more than 30 major awards in his career. He has also set six world records. The 24-year-old was born near Sloviansk, a city in Donetsk Oblast that was an early border town when Russia first invaded the region in 2014. He suffers from cerebral palsy and was 11 when a chance conversation at home changed his life.
“We had some repairs done in the apartment and my parents hired a woman to put up wallpaper,” he says. “It turned out that she was working as an administrator at the swimming pool in Sloviansk at the same time. She found out that I had health problems and said that children in similar situations could train there and that Paralympic athletes were also trained. My mother called her literally the next day and we went there for a kind of trial training. They looked at me and said that 11 was too old to be an athlete. But then they said that if I really had the desire, we could try. It turned out that the desire was very strong.”
The rest is history. The fact that Trusov continues to live and train in Kamianske, the de facto base for Paralympic swimmers from the areas occupied or most threatened by Russia, is very timely. Sitting next to him at the Invasport club in Dnipro, to which all the athletes interviewed by the Guardian belong, is another swimmer from Donetsk oblast: Veronika Korzhova, a 16-year-old who lost both legs as a child. Korzhova went to Kamianske in April 2022 when the situation in her home region became untenable. Shockingly, Soledar, where she grew up, is now all but destroyed. “That was the hardest moment,” she says. “Moving to the city and coming here to train with new coaches and a new team.”
Displaced athletes like Kol, Trusov and Korzhova are receiving state-funded accommodation in a hotel near the pool, located in the tree-lined Soviet-era suburb of Kamianske. Their families also rent apartments in the area. “I think it’s brought everyone closer together,” says Korzhova, who will make her Paralympic debut in Paris. “We have such a strong sense of mutual support.”
It was a dream that had to be kept alive. “I watched Tokyo and had a great desire to take part in the Paralympics for the first time this year,” says Korzhova. The fact that she managed to do it despite all the difficulties in her young life is an amazing achievement.
In 2023, a large part of the budget of Ukrainian parasports was restored, while foreign sponsors were also asked for funds. However, the country had yet to decide which athletes it could fully support and which competitions it could take part in. In the initial stages, some Paralympics participants at least partially financed their participation in the training camps themselves. Now the precarious situation has at least partially stabilized and the task is to show that even the daily sadness of the war in Russia cannot tarnish a jewel in the country’s sports crown.
“We will show how important Ukraine is and we are going there to win,” says Kol. Trusov is aware that the act of winning can have a double meaning. “Every time our athletes step onto the podium and the national anthem sounds, we remind people of that,” he says. “My personal goal is to show people that we are still here and can maintain a decent international level.”
Back in the pool, Serbin completes his first training session of the day. There will be another later. At 20, he knows how much dedication is required, even if his coach, watching from the side, proudly points out that he is also a talented singer and musician. His worst fears for 2022, at least in terms of employment, have not come true. “Now we can be sure that we have a job, we will be paid for it and we will not be left alone,” he says. The Paralympics will be a powerful example of Ukraine’s unity.
