Ukrainian Paralympic athletes hold a protest in China
Ukrainian Paralympic athletes hold a protest in China.
YANQING, China — The Ukrainian delegation at the Winter Paralympic Games in China held a demonstration for peace at the athletes’ village on Thursday.
The group unfurled a banner appealing for peace and observed a minute of silence in response to Russia’s invasion of their country.
The vigil was led by Valerii Sushkevych, the Ukraine Paralympic committee president. The delegation, including coaches, staff and all 20 athletes, raised fists under a banner that said, “Peace For All.”
The demonstration was an unusual departure for the Paralympics, which attempts to invoke neutrality and not weigh in specifically on international politics. But before the Games even opened, the International Paralympic Committee banned Russian and Belarusian athletes because of Russia’s invasion and the support of Belarus.
Andrew Parsons, the head of the I.P.C., broke protocol at the opening ceremony and denounced the invasion during his speech with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, in attendance. The I.P.C. posted a photograph of Thursday’s demonstration on its website and included comments by Sushkevych and others at the event.
“Stop war,” Sushkevych said. “If you are civilized, you must stop war.”
Andriy Nesterenko, the head coach of the delegation, described some of the destruction in Ukrainian cities, including Kharkiv, his hometown. “There are seven people from our team from Kharkiv,” Nesterenko said, “but some of them doesn’t have the possibility to come back. Their flats, their private houses are already destroyed. We kindly ask the people all over the world, we need your support immediately. We need your support today, not later.”
Ukraine has a history of success at the Paralympics and has done well at the Beijing Games, too, collecting 19 medals through six days of competition. That placed it second behind China and its six gold medals are third behind China and Canada. In an interview earlier in the week, Sushkevych appealed to Western countries to intervene by closing Ukraine air space to Russian war planes.
“Find, please, a way,” he said. “Find a possibility. Many peaceful people died from the bombs from the sky. Please find decision to stop Russian flights.”
