20 days ago, Oleksandr Abramenko was in China, celebrating his silver medal – the only one won by Ukraine at the Beijing Winter Olympics. In 2018, in Pyeongchang, he went gold.
Abramenko, one of the most talented aerial maneuvers athletes in freestyle skiing, a participant in five Olympic editions and the flag bearer of his delegation at the opening ceremony in Beijing, attracted more attention after the event, when the photograph of a hug between him and a Russian rival circulated widely.
On Friday night (4), in Kiev, Abramenko, 33, was in the garage of his building, with his wife, Alexandra, and Dmitri, 2, the couple’s son. They tried to protect themselves in the war fought in their country.
Thousands of people were trying to flee the city, which resulted in large crowds and chaos at the Ukrainian capital’s main railway station, as Ukraine’s armed forces reported that the Russian army’s main objective was to encircle the city of Kiev.
In a conversation via text messages, Abramenko asked someone to take a picture of his family. They were bundled up against the cold and sitting on a mattress. Dmitri had a pacifier in his mouth.
It was the seventh night the family had slept in the garage, believing it was safer there than in their 20th-floor apartment, not far from the city’s main airport.
“We spent the night in the underground garage, inside the car, because the air strike alert was constantly going off,” Abramenko wrote in one of his messages. “Sleeping in the apartment was too scary. I could even see from the window how the air defense systems were working against enemy missiles, and loud explosions were audible.”
On Friday, in the midst of the race to leave Kiev, Abramenko knew it was time to leave, heading for an unknown future. The family planned to leave the city by car on Saturday, traveling to western Ukraine, close to the borders with Slovakia and Hungary. Under normal conditions, a trip like this would take at least ten hours.
“I plan to travel to the home of my coach, Enver Ablaev, who lives in Mukachevo, in the Transcarpathian region,” Abramenko said. “I go by car, taking essentials with me, food and my Olympic medals.”
In addition to the silver medal he recently won, Abramenko took gold at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
The small world of freestyle skiing is looking to offer some comfort to the colleague. Athletes from Switzerland, including Andreas Isoz, a former Olympic competitor, are raising money and planned to travel over the weekend to Mukachevo, or as close as they could get to the Ukrainian border, to distribute supplies.
Abramenko isn’t sure what the immediate future might bring. He is worried about his parents, who live in Mikolaiv, a port city on the Black Sea where the athlete grew up. The city lies between Kherson, occupied by the Russians, and Odessa, an important target for Russia.
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