Ukraine won its third gold medal at the Paris Olympics on Wednesday, with President Volodymyr Zelensky expressing his gratitude on social media.
Ukrainian middleweight boxer Oleksandr Khizhnyak won the gold medal at Roland Garros after defeating Kazakhstan’s Nurbek Oralbai 3-2 in a thrilling final.
“Ukraine wins another gold medal at the Paris Olympics! Boxer Oleksandr Khizhnyakh won the championship,” President Zelenskyy said in a post on X after the match.
“Thank you for your strength, your confidence and for this important victory. We continue to support all our athletes. We support Ukraine. We support Ukrainians!”
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On the ninth day of the Paris Olympics, referee Muhammad Pohan announced Ukraine’s Oleksandr Khizhnyak as the winner after his match against Cuba’s Arlen Lopez Cardona in the men’s 80 kg semi-finals. (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)
Khizhnyak is the latest Ukrainian gold medalist in Paris, following high jumper Yaroslava Makhchikh and fencing competitor Olga Harlan, giving the country a total of eight medals.
Wednesday’s victory was a moment of both national and personal pride for Khizhnyak, Ukraine’s first men’s gold medalist at the Paris Games. Khizhnyak was favored to beat Brazil’s Herbert Sousa and win the middleweight gold medal at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, but a powerful punch from Sousa knocked Khizhnyak down and he had to settle for the silver medal.
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Since that defeat, Hiznyak’s country has been invaded and many of his teammates killed.
The war between Russia and Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, just days after the closing of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, has now lasted two years, five months and two weeks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy listens during a meeting with European Parliament President Roberta Metsora on April 1, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via Associated Press)
Just 140 athletes will represent Ukraine at the Olympics, the country’s smallest ever participation in a Summer Olympics due to hundreds of deaths during the war.
A display of sports equipment was set up in Parliament Square, London, to commemorate the 487 victims. Ukrainian athlete murdered Many victims have been reported since the Russian invasion, including Oleksandr Pierischenko, a weightlifter at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, and Katerina Dyachenko, an 11-year-old rhythmic gymnast who was murdered in March 2022.
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Gold medalist Oleksandr Khizhnyak of Ukraine poses on the podium during the awards ceremony after the men’s 80 kg boxing final on the 12th day of the Paris Olympics. (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)
When Russia invaded Ukraine just four days after the 2022 Winter Olympics concluded, the International Olympic Committee deemed the attack a violation of the Olympic Truce, which calls for all nations to lay down their arms and refrain from participating in conflicts from one week before the start of the Olympics until one week after they end.
As a result, Russian athletes are not allowed to represent their country in Paris, but they can compete as “individual neutral athletes”.
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