ROMNY, Ukraine – Maksym Halinichev won silver at the Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, in a match described at the time as “two of the best young fighters chasing glory”. He considered the fight a defeat – it wasn’t gold after all – but it gave him a map for the future.
So Halinichev made plans: he would defeat that boxer next time. He would teach his daughter the fundamentals of the sport so she could defend herself. And she would win a medal for Ukraine at the Paris Olympics.
Halinchev described these ambitions as an athlete in an interview with the Ukrainian Boxing Federation website in December 2021, when Russian troops were already massed on Ukraine’s borders.
Asked if he was afraid before a fight, he described his thoughts.
“Fear can influence people in many ways. Some people are paralyzed by this. Some react by becoming more liberated,” he said then. “If you can control yourself and your body and set yourself on the right path, the fear will subside.”
He will not be able to prove this philosophy in the Olympic ring in Paris.
Halinichev enlisted as a soldier and was killed at the front in March 2023, aged 22, one of more than 400 athletes killed since the start of the war. His body has not yet been recovered.
As one of Ukraine’s most promising boxing prospects, Halinichev could have been protected from war. Ukraine has sent many of its Olympic hopefuls to train abroad ahead of the Summer Olympics. But not everyone wants to be saved. Some choose to defend their country’s honor on the battlefield rather than the sporting arena.
Halinichev’s attitude toward fear remained intact after the full-scale Russian invasion, but his priorities changed.
It happened during a trip in April 2022 from his home region of Sumy to Kiev, where he planned to train for the upcoming European championships. Russia had just withdrawn from the region and, along the road, saw towns and villages destroyed by Russian troops during their brief occupation, said their trainer, Bohdan Dmytrenko.
“I have a young son. I don’t want her to live busy among the aggressor, among the Russians,” Halinichev told another of his coaches, Volodymyr Vinnikov.
“I said, Maksym, please listen to me, you are still a representative of Ukrainian boxing, you also defend the honor of Ukraine. The flag, the anthem – it’s also very important,” said Vinnikov.
“You won’t convince me. I made that decision. I’m going to learn to shoot,” Halinichev told him.
Boxing was still important to him, but he wanted more, said his life partner, Polina Ihrak. Sumy, a border region, was still under attack despite the Russian withdrawal. Kherson, where he trained, was under Russian occupation and reports of Ukrainians’ suffering were coming in.
“He couldn’t understand how his friends, coaches who were in Kherson, were unable to live, much less train, and he was going to go somewhere in Europe,” Ihrak said. “He couldn’t allow himself to do that. That mattered to him.
In May 2022, at age 21, Halinichev joined the airborne assault troops, according to the Boxing Federation of Ukraine. He was injured before the end of the year near Bakhmut, with a foot wound and shrapnel embedded so deep in his leg that doctors were unable to remove it.
During his recovery, Halinichev spent time with his trainer but avoided discussing what he saw in the war. Everyone expected him to abandon the army, but Halinichev returned to the battlefield with his wounds unhealed.
“He believed he had to return to his brothers in arms because it was necessary,” said Ihrak, the mother of his daughter, Vasilisa.
Halinichev and Ihrak last spoke via video call on March 9, 2023. Days of no contact turned into weeks. She tried calling Halinichev and his commander. Neither of them responded.
She began scrolling through Russian Telegram channels, looking for his face among the photos of the dead and wounded on the battlefield. One photo stood out, of a body in the woods.
“His mother recognized him immediately, but I didn’t, because I think I refused to recognize him,” Ihrak said. He was killed on March 10, 2023, in Luhansk, a region now almost entirely under Russian control.
At a recent celebration in her father’s honor at the gym where he trained, 4-year-old Vasilisa bounced happily around the boxing ring, wearing oversized gloves that dwarfed her small hands.
It won’t be her father who teaches her how to fight, but Ihrak couldn’t imagine Halinichev would do anything different.
“People go there (forward) not to regret it, but to change something,” Ihrak said. “He’s definitely back.”
Among others who died fighting for Ukraine: shooters Ivan Bidnyak, who won silver at the European Championships, and Yehor Kihitov, a member of the Ukrainian national team; Stanislav Hulenkov, a 22-year-old judoka whose body was identified 10 months after he was killed; and weightlifter Oleksandr Pielieshenko, who represented Ukraine at the 2016 Rio Olympics. A Russian missile attack in Dnipro killed acrobatics trainer Anastasia Ihnatenko, her husband and their 18-month-old son.
Vinnikov, who coached Halinichev in 2017, has no doubt that the youngster would be representing his country at the Paris Games, which begin on July 26, if the invasion had not disrupted his plans. “He would have won a medal for his country,” the coach said emphatically.
He had enormous potential: gold medal at the 2017 European Youth Championship, silver medal at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games, silver medal at the 2021 European Under-22 Championship.
In his empty apartment in the city of Shostka, his parents filled a room with evidence of what he had already achieved: trophies and medals from 2010 to 2021, neatly arranged on a shelf.
His photograph sits in the corner along with a candle, photos of his childhood, a religious icon and flowers. His boxing gloves are nearby.
But Halinichev’s parents no longer live there. Since the war, they have remade their lives in the Czech Republic. Ihrak is thinking about moving to Germany.
Dmytrenko, his trainer, keeps Halinichev’s photos well organized in folders and even keeps an archive of the messages exchanged. He recalled a moment just before the war when he praised Halinichev’s achievements.
Halinichev responded simply: “Everything is yet to come.”
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Leicester reported from Paris.
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
