Understandable. The Olympic champion (2004), who has been living in Linz for five years, follows the reports of the war in her Ukrainian homeland with fear. “It hurts and is unbearable how Ukraine is being destroyed,” writes Kostevych on her Facebook channel. Their friends and relatives spent the night in shelters. Your coach is currently unable to go to his family. Kostewytsch: “I wouldn’t wish on anyone to have to feel something like that.”
“Never felt discriminated against”
Born in Khabarovsk, a city at the eastern end of the former Soviet Union and what is now Russia, and raised in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Kostevych combines both warring parties in her vita. “I speak Russian and Ukrainian fluently. I’ve never felt discriminated against,” said Ukraine’s flag-bearer at the Summer Games in Tokyo. She also has Belarusian roots, from where Russian troops also invaded Ukraine. “Russian and Belarusian blood flows in me, but now I am overwhelmed with hatred for these two ‘nations'”.
She expresses her gratitude for the support that Ukraine is now receiving, while at the same time Kostevych criticizes the fact that “European and American partners left Ukraine alone in the face of the occupier.”
Source: Nachrichten
