ROMNEY, Ukraine (AP) — Maksim Khalinichev won the silver medal at the Buenos Aires Youth Olympics in a match described at the time as “the best two young fighters competing for glory.” He considered the bout a loss. He ended up not winning the gold medal, but the match gave him a path forward.
So Khalinichev came up with a plan: next time he would beat the boxer, teach his daughter the basics of boxing so she could defend herself, and bring a medal to Ukraine at the Paris Olympics.
In December 2021, when Russian troops were already massing on the Ukrainian border, Kharichev spoke about his ambitions as an athlete in an interview with the Ukrainian Boxing Federation website.
When asked if he feels scared before a match, he shared his thoughts.
“Fear affects people in different ways. Some people become paralyzed by it, while others respond with more liberation,” he said at the time. “If you can control yourself and your body and get moving in the right direction, the fear will go away.”
He won't be able to prove that philosophy in the Olympic rings in Paris.
Khalinichev enlisted as a soldier and was killed on the front line in March 2023 at the age of 22. He is one of more than 400 athletes who have died since the start of the war. His body has yet to be recovered.
Khalinichev, one of Ukraine's most promising boxers, may have been able to escape the war. Ukraine is sending many of its Olympic hopefuls abroad to train ahead of the Summer Olympics. But not everyone is hoping to be saved. Some choose to defend their country's honor on the battlefield rather than the sports field.
Khalinichev's attitude towards terror did not change after the full-scale Russian invasion, but his priorities shifted.
It happened in April 2022, on a road trip from his hometown in Sumy Oblast to Kiev, where he was planning to train for the upcoming European Championships. Russian troops had just withdrawn from the area, and all along the highway he saw towns and villages destroyed by Russian forces during their brief occupation, his coach, Bohdan Dmitrenko, said.
“I have a small child and I don't want her to live an occupied life among invaders, Russians,” Khalinichev told another coach, Volodymyr Vinnikov.
“I said, 'Maxim, listen to me. You are the representative of Ukrainian boxing, you are defending the honor of Ukraine. The flag and anthem are very important,'” Vinnikov recalled.
“You won't convince me. I have made this decision. I am going to learn to shoot,” Khalinichev told him.
Boxing was still important to him, but he wanted something more, his partner, Polina Ikhlakh, said. Though Russian troops had withdrawn, the border town of Sumy was still under attack. Kherson, where he trained, was under Russian occupation, and reports were trickling in that Ukrainians there were suffering.
“He couldn't understand how he could go somewhere in Europe while his friends and coaches in Kherson could barely train, let alone survive,” Ifrak said. “He couldn't afford that. That was important to him.”
According to the Ukrainian Boxing Federation, Khalinichev enlisted in the Airborne Forces in May 2022, aged 21. He was wounded near Bakhmut at the end of the year, suffering a wound in his leg. Shrapnel was so deeply embedded in his leg that doctors were unable to remove it.
During his recovery, Khalinichev spent time with his coach but avoided talking about what he saw in the war. Everyone wanted him to leave the army, but Khalinichev returned to the battlefield with his wounds still wounded.
“He believed he had to return to his comrades because he was needed,” said Ikhlaq, whose daughter Vasilisa is his mother.
Mr. Halinichev and Ms. Ifrak last spoke by video call on March 9, 2023. Weeks went by without communication. She tried calling Mr. Halinichev and his commander, but neither answered the phone.
She scrolled through Russian Telegram channels, searching for his face among photos of the dead and wounded on the battlefield, and one photo stood out, showing bodies in a forest.
“His mother recognised him immediately, but I didn't, probably because I refused to acknowledge him,” Ikhlaq said. He was killed on March 10, 2023, in Luhansk, an area now almost entirely under Russian control.
At a recent memorial for her father held at the gym where he used to train, four-year-old Vasilisa bounced happily around the boxing ring in gloves that were too big for her tiny hands.
Although her father won't be the one to teach her how to fight, Ifrak couldn't imagine Halinichev doing anything differently.
“People don't go to the front lines to regret things, they go to change things,” Ifrak said. “He came back without a second thought.”
Among those who died fighting for Ukraine were Ivan Vidnyak, a pistol shooter who won a silver medal at the European Championships, Yehor Kyhitov, a member of the Ukrainian national team, Stanislav Hyurenkov, a 22-year-old judoka whose body was identified 10 months after his murder, and Oleksandr Pierishenko, a weightlifter who represented Ukraine at the Rio Olympics in 2016. In Dnipro, a Russian missile attack killed acrobatic coach Anastasia Ikhnatenko, her husband and their 18-month-old son.
Vinnikov, who coached Khalinichev in 2017, has no doubt that the youngster would have represented his country at the Paris Olympics, which begin on July 26, had the invasion not derailed his plans. “He would have won a medal for his country,” the coach insisted.
He has great potential, winning a gold medal at the 2017 European Youth Championships, a silver medal at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games and a silver medal at the 2021 European U-22 Championships.
In his spare apartment in the town of Šoshka, his parents have neatly arranged shelves displaying all the trophies and medals he has earned from 2010 to 2021 – testament to his achievements.
His photo stands in a corner, along with candles, photos from his childhood, religious symbols and flowers. Boxing gloves are nearby.
But Halinichev's parents no longer live there – since the war they have rebuilt their life in the Czech Republic – and Ivlak is considering moving to Germany.
Dmitrenko, the coach, keeps a folder full of neatly organized photos of Khalinichev, as well as an archive of messages the two men sent to each other, recalling when he praised Khalinichev's achievements just before the war.
Khalinichev simply replied: “It's all still to come.”
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Lester reported from Paris.
