How world sports bent to Moscow's will
Ukrainian athletes who were not yet injured or killed by Russia’s ruthless attacks face the pain of having to compete with the enemy in the world’s top arenas.
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UK seizes Russian shadow fleet tanker for the 1st time… Crimea’s fuel crisis spreads to Moscow… Zelenskyy comments on Putin’s intercepted documents… Evacuated Ukrainian children stranded in Italy due to court rulings…
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OUR LEAD STORY:
TBILISI, Georgia — Hundreds of viewers gasp in the thick air in excitement. For a moment, time itself seems to freeze in anticipation.
The scoreboard shows 14:14, this is a tie. Two sabers are raised for the final strike that will determine the winner.
Yuliia’s heart is pounding from the rapid movements, and the sound of rushing blood grows louder in her ears, but keeping composure is a must. She begins the attack, closing swiftly on her opponent, and lands a precise strike on her torso. The next moment, Yuliia is swept away by a hot wave of triumph. She has emerged victorious again, while her opponent, multiple Olympic champion and Russian Armed Forces major Sofya Velikaya, got knocked out of the 2025 Fencing World Championships.
The final strike that brought Ukraine’s Yuliia Bakastova victory over Russia’s Sofya Velikaya. July 2025. Video by the National Fencing Federation of Ukraine.
Yuliia Bakastova, a top Ukrainian fencer, finds herself in a whirlwind of emotion every time she walks onto the piste to compete against the world’s strongest athletes. She has to contain it all — excitement, anxiety, confidence, and now the pain of facing Russians at the upcoming Fencing World Championships.
As soon as Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the sports arena also turned into a battlefield. According to the Angels of Sports project, led by the President of the Sports Committee of Ukraine Illia Shevliak, about 3,000 athletes are defending Ukraine in the Armed Forces (AFU). The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has recently reported that over 650 athletes and coaches have been killed in ruthless Russian attacks.
While Russia and its close ally Belarus are trying to erase Ukrainian sports altogether, their teams still enter the world’s most prestigious competitions — including the Olympic Games — in a so-called “neutral” status, without their national flags and anthems. In the 2026 Winter Olympics hosted by Italy, a “neutral” Russian ski mountaineer, Nikita Filippov, even claimed a silver medal and received a wave of praise across Russian media.
On March 28, 2025, the World Kickboxing Federation was the first major sporting organization to let athletes from Russia and Belarus compete under their national symbols. This launched a wave of similar decisions across dozens of sports; the latest was taken on June 2 by the International Fencing Federation (FIE), which brought the competitors from Russia and Belarus back into the spotlight, starting from this year’s World Championships in Hong Kong.
While Russia is trying to portray big international sports as apolitical, they are not. Participation in top competitions brings Russia and its undemocratic counterparts visibility, respect, and fame and gradually normalizes their crimes by placing aggressors next to their victims on the winners’ pedestal.
For Yuliia, not only the sudden return of Russian athletes but even her whole career in fencing came unexpectedly. As a kid, she used to do wushu (Chinese martial arts) but had to abandon it when her family couldn’t afford to pay for training anymore. Fencing, on the other hand, was free. At 12, Yuliia first attended it and found a new passion.
“My Grandma took me there. She said she had a friend who could introduce me to the coach. She took me to the gym, I tried it, and I liked it,” Yullia recalled.
What began as an experiment is now Yuliia’s life. Her first coach, Oleksandr Obolenskyi, patiently showed her all the beauty of fencing and made her fall in love with the saber and the freedom it gave.
He was also the one who supported Yuliia when she came second-to-last in her first-ever competition. That day, totally unfazed by her result, she called her mother and only heard a demand to treat fencing more seriously. But the coach said something Yuliia still remembers: there is no victory without defeats.
After her first wins at local tournaments in Kyiv and then in nationwide competitions, Yuliia began working to become a professional athlete. Her teenage years were especially tough, as sports achievements were not an excuse to fall behind at school.
“My parents always had a rule that if I studied poorly, I would not go to training. Fencing was very important for me, so I always tried to study well. In fact, when I entered the sports boarding school, I finished it with a gold medal, too,” Yuliia shared.
At the age of 20, she was accepted to the national fencing team. Two years later, Yuliia got to represent Ukraine at the European Championships in Novi Sad, Serbia. Then, Ukrainian fencers came second after the athletes from Russia — the country that had already occupied Crimea and part of the Donbas.
In 2022, when Russian fencers were banned from major international sports events, the Ukrainian team had to leave their homes. As the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion plunged the country into chaos, the coach Andrea Terenzio offered athletes refuge and training facilities in Italy. That looked like a dream but turned out to be a nightmare.
“When my mother wrote that it was a terrible night, I couldn’t help her... It was very difficult. When we read such news and came to the training, our coach could often see that we were doing terribly,” Yuliia said.
The athletes’ mental states became a major obstacle to their performance. To qualify for the Olympics, fencing teams have to undergo one of the hardest pre-selections. Only eight top teams in each fencing discipline can get the Olympic license. When Yuliia arrived in Italy, the Ukrainian saber team was in 19th place, facing one defeat after another.
Thanks to their perseverance and Terenzio’s trust in their abilities, the fencers came fourth in the 2023 World Championships in Milan. This is where Yuliia first faced — and defeated — “neutral” Russian fencers. In such duels, it becomes especially difficult for her to keep calm and focused.
“When you see a Russian fencer before you, you also see everything that is happening in your country, in the news… Well, there were many different thoughts.” She took her time to choose words carefully. “Sometimes, I just really want to tell them everything! But I still have to do everything according to the rules and show it publicly.”
This conflict between personal pain and sports ethics is familiar to all Ukrainian athletes who want to express support for their country publicly during the competitions. One of the most recent and illustrative cases is the story of the Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych. He was disqualified from the 2026 Winter Olympics for wearing a “helmet of remembrance” with photos of Ukrainian athletes killed in Russian strikes. In solidarity, Ukrainian athletes and even the AFU supported him with the motto “Remembrance is not a violation.”
Indeed, the World Championships victory had a bitter taste, but it became the first step on Ukraine’s path to the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. There, Ukrainian fencers emerged victorious, beating the South Korean team in the final round, and brought home the long-awaited gold medals.
“This is the moment I will remember for the rest of my life. This is what I was going for. All our team was going for it. This is when I fulfilled one of my dreams!” Yuliia shared.
Still, the grand victory couldn’t prepare her for facing the Russians in the 2025 World Championships in Georgia. This time, she competed against top-level athletes like Sofya Velikaya and Yana Yegoryan. Yuliia still remembers how a reporter approached them with hugs and smiles and then came up to the Ukrainian team to ask how things were going at home.
This is not uncommon, but after Russian fencers return to the piste with their national symbols, it can get much worse. Yuliia believes that Russia is returning to global sports arenas thanks to its influence on many world federations and all the money it has invested in them. In fencing, that was especially evident from 2008 to February 2022, when the FIE was chaired by Alisher Usmanov — one of Russia’s richest oligarchs. On November 30, 2024, he was re-elected as President but stepped down in just a few days so international sanctions against him would not affect the FIE.
“Everyone knows that Russia will not stop,” Yuliia warned. “It will always want power, want to be listened to, to be the best. Russia’s athletes are raised as if they were the best, the smartest, and so cool. But in fact, as it turned out, Russia is just a bubble.”
To pop this bubble, she doesn’t stop reminding viewers and international media reporters what exactly Russia is doing to her country, her nation, her home city, and hundreds of Ukrainian athletes who will never win another medal. Yuliia doesn’t give up because she has already seen one brave person changing the game.
At the 2023 World Championships in Milan, her teammate Olha Kharlan refused to shake hands with a Russian fencer, Anna Smirnova. This small action catalyzed change in the rules for everyone. Now, to consider the fight complete, fencers can just salute each other or touch blades instead of a formal handshake.
Yuliia will not cease to compete, score wins against Russia’s athletes, and expose its crimes to the global audience, as this is what years of fencing taught her to do.
“You need to be disciplined and believe in what you do. Sometimes you need time to achieve something. If you really put yourself into your work and do everything for it, the answer will always be there,” she said confidently.
Persistence can get you everything, be it another medal or bringing Russia down.
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Featured Subscribers’ Comment:
“Great report, there are actual details about what is taking place and where. This coverage reminds us that there is so much more going on than what we see in mainstream media at this point. Thanks for keeping the news current.”
By Ann Starkey
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THE LATEST NEWS AT THIS HOUR:
By Oleksandra Poda
Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.
UK SEIZES RUSSIAN SHADOW FLEET TANKER FOR THE 1ST TIME: On June 14, the British Armed Forces seized the tanker Smyrtos. The vessel was unflagged but previously held the Cameroonian flag before it was removed from the Cameroonian registry and was transporting sanctioned Russian oil. The vessel was detained while attempting to cross the English Channel and was subsequently towed to the coast of England, where it will be held pending investigation.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer thanked the British armed forces, stating, “This successful operation delivers yet another blow to Russia and reminds those fueling Putin’s war in Ukraine that we will not let them hide.”
In March, Starmer announced that sanctioned vessels from Russia’s shadow fleet transiting British waters could be intercepted and detained by the British Armed Forces and law enforcement agencies. In May, Starmer also announced sanctions against 100 vessels that have transported sanctioned cargo.
CRIMEA’S FUEL CRISIS SPREADS TO MOSCOW: The Russian Republic of Tatarstan, which ranks second in the Russian Federation in terms of oil production, has imposed limits on purchases of fuel at gas stations. Major gas stations in Moscow and St. Petersburg have also begun to impose restrictions.
Previously, starting on May 31, gasoline in occupied Crimea was sold only with ration coupons, and in Sevastopol, a complete temporary suspension of fuel sales was announced.
Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries and terminals have halted or significantly reduced operations by about a quarter of Russia’s total refining capacity. The Russian government has banned gasoline exports until July.
ZELENSKYY COMMENTS ON PUTIN’S INTERCEPTED DOCUMENTS: On June 14, Zelenskyy revealed that internal Russian intelligence forecasts prepared specifically for Putin were obtained by Ukrainian intelligence. The documents were prepared ahead of the State Duma elections scheduled for September 18-20, 2026. According to them, support for the ruling United Russia party is declining, and dissatisfaction with Putin himself among Russians could reach 33%.
The growing discontent is attributed to inflation caused by military spending.
EVACUATED UKRAINIAN CHILDREN STRANDED IN ITALY DUE TO COURT RULINGS: On June 13, CNN published an in-depth investigation into how the humanitarian evacuation of Ukrainian children turned into a legal dispute between Kyiv and the Italian judicial system. In the summer of 2022, 25 orphans from an orphanage in Sumy were evacuated to Naples by a charity that reached out to the facility’s director. However, upon arrival in Italy, their legal guardians were not recognized by Italy, and they were granted refugee status as unaccompanied minors and were assigned new Italian guardians.
At the same time, Italy has a law dating back to the migration crisis that prohibits the removal of a child refugee without a court order, except in “exceptional circumstances.” Many foster families are opposing sending the children back to Ukraine.
PIGEONS OF WAR
Two doves show that no matter how dark and frightening the night may be, love always triumphs.
Stay safe out there.
Best,
Oleksandra
 | A guest post by
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I dunno, I think this article dehumanizes the Russian athletes. They didn't choose where they were born, and the "military" title cited was in a specific sports division, yes? The neutral athlete model - without displaying the flag or playing the anthem of a nation that has attacked and called for the destruction of another nation -- makes sense.