The pre-war escalation in Ukraine leads the Kiev politician and former world heavyweight boxing champion to call for the recruitment and training of reservists. “I am ready to fight for the motherland,” says ‘Dr. Iron fist’
As a soldier I swore in his day to defend the country and I am ready to fight for my homeland». These are not empty words, at least coming from Vitali Klitschko, a former heavyweight champion and mayor of Kiev since 2014, the same year that the escalation of war caused by Russia viciously shook Ukraine, that land ravaged by famines, nuclear disasters and now a war that feeds on the same gas that turns on the heaters.
If Klitschko now comes to the fore, it is not because of his sporting successes, but because of organizing the civil protection of his city in the framework of a conflict that has reached its boiling point and to which the EU and the United States appear. Faced with the concentration of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers across the border, the mayor has called for the recruitment and training of reservists. “The West cannot ignore the accumulation of troops and consider it simple threats or small games,” he warned from the pages of the German newspaper Bild.
The politician does not have to look far back to justify his fears, since it is not the first time that the Kremlin has seized sovereign territory from them with very similar maneuvers. The blockade of the supply of arms by Germany – a country that distinguished Klitschko with the Cross of Merit for his social work and the projects he sponsors – has not done the former boxer any good, who never tires of reminding that aid from the West has never been so necessary. “We are in the center of Europe and we share a border with several EU countries. We do not want war, but we will not allow Russia to return us to the times of the Soviet Union, an empire in which the people of Ukraine do not want to be. We too are Europe and we need your support more than ever.”
The rearmament of Kiev and the purchase of drones from Turkey have stirred up the Kremlin, which is quietly rehearsing in Donetsk and Lugansk, the two separatist entities of Donbass, what it did some time ago in Crimea. But the situation has changed: in Ukraine no one is willing to be caught off guard again and the subsequent rapprochement with European and North American positions has not sat well with Putin, to whom the free choice of allies that nations have seems bring to the heave
Chernobyl live
Although born in Kyrgyzstan in 1971 (his father was an officer in the Soviet Army and the family spent years traveling from one destination to another), Klitschko felt Ukrainian from the moment he landed there. Those were difficult times, when his parents, his brother Vasili, his grandmother and he shared a room with the right to a kitchen on the outskirts of Kiev. Vitali took care of the little one at all hours, from whom he is separated by five years and towards whom he has always been overprotective.
He wasn’t blessed and his father didn’t hesitate to use his belt to straighten him, like the time he hid an explosive mine he found in a field under his bed. The Chernobyl nuclear accident, located just 93 kilometers from his home, took its toll on the family. His father led one of the detachments sent to tackle the radioactive threat and contracted cancer that stayed with him for the rest of his days.
His professional track record is legendary: 47 matches played, two defeats (on both occasions he retired due to injury, when he was ahead on points). He has never been knocked out. A career in the ring that runs parallel to that of his brother Vasili, whom he assisted from the corner, the only one who beats him in titles but whom he has never faced. Their mother, whom they called to reassure once their rivals had been liquidated, made it clear to both of them years ago: “Brothers don’t fight.”
Founder of the Democratic Alliance Party for Ukrainian Reform, he is called ‘Dr. Iron Fist’ for his doctorate in Sports Sciences and is passionate about chess. Respected, restrained, rich… his landing in politics took place during one of the many injuries that marked Vitali’s career -disc, knee, back, cruciate ligament…-, but if you ever thought that fair play was going to prevail there, it didn’t take him long to get out of his mistake.
As history has shown, politics in Ukraine is quite a sorry spectacle, where there is no shortage of dubious elections, the jailing of opposition leaders or fistfights in Parliament, such as the one that occurred in December 2012, which Vitali preferred to follow from a distance. , mostly in case he missed a hook. It was not the first time they had played with fire. “Gentlemen, do not force me to answer them,” he snapped at the rioters who provoked him when the party he founded became the third most voted force in the country. The warning was not bragging, much less with the deputies jumping for seats and shaking the former world champion with the purpose of making him lose his temper.
Klitschko became mayor of Kiev in 2014, two years after retaining the title for the ninth consecutive time and the World Boxing Council named him champion emeritus because his political activity prevented him from continuing to fight. Let no one be mistaken by the cliché of the famous boxer by force of kissing the canvas. At 50 years old and with a body that seems sculpted in marble, if Vitali does not stand out for something, it is because he talks more than necessary.
Vitali landed at City Hall with full honors, after being one of the leaders of the protests that put an end to Viktor Yanukovych’s government. He even fought for the presidency of the country, a bus from which he preferred to get off for the sake, he said, of the opposition unit, in which Timoshenko or the ultimately elected Poroshenko shone at the time. Eight years later, fate places him back in the trenches.
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