Novak Djokovic, currently number 2 in the world, has offered financial help to former Ukrainian tennis player Sergiy Stakhovsky, who has joined Ukrainian troops fighting the Russian army.
“I think of you. I hope everything calms down soon. Tell me to which address I can send the help… financial aid or any kind of help…”, wrote the Serb in a WhatsApp conversation posted on Instagram by Stakhovsky .
The former Ukrainian player, who reached number 31 in the ATP rankings, had among his greatest successes the victory over Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2013. He retired at the age of 36, after participating in the Australian Open earlier this year, and decided to go to Kiev to participate in the armed defense against the Russian invasion.
He said in an interview with CNN that the decision to return to his homeland was fraught with guilt and that neither he nor his wife, of Russian descent, told their three children, all under the age of seven, what their fate was. of the trip.
Other Ukrainian athletes also made the decision to take up arms to defend their country. In boxing, Vitali Klitschko, former world champion, took off his Kiev mayor’s suit to organize the defense of his city and its 3 million inhabitants.
His younger brother Wladimir, also a former boxing champion, enlisted as a reservist.
Former lightweight world champion Vasyl Lomachenko joined the territorial defense battalion at Belgorod-Dnistrovsky, near Odessa.
Ukrainian biathletes withdrew from competing at the World Cup this March. On his social media, Dmytro Pidruchnyi, world champion of pursuit in 2019, posted a photo in combat suit in Ternopil, in western Ukraine, where he says he joined the National Guard.
Several players on the Ukrainian national football team – including Oleksandr Zinchenko and Andriy Yarmolenko – called for “resistance” against the Russian invasion, in a video published by the Ukrainian Federation (UAF).
“We urge everyone in football to oppose Russian propaganda, to show and tell the truth about the war in Ukraine by any means possible,” said thirteen national team players.
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