For a few days, Ukrainians Dmytro Melnyk and Yevheniy Korinez will play sitting volleyball together in Paris, then their paths will separate again. Melnyk will return to the soldiers in his unit, which he left at the front. Korinez will be able to guess what awaits his teammate in the war, because he experienced it himself before he lost a leg.
“Being here is another chance to represent our country and show the world that we are still here,” says Korinez, as he stands in the interview zone of the arena in the far north of Paris after the team’s first game at the Paralympics, where the sitting volleyball players play their matches in an exhibition center that has been converted for this summer. Melnyk arrives shortly afterwards. How does he manage to switch from his life in the military to that of an athlete? The team, he says, is his second family: “I want to be useful to them.”
Wars and their scars are often a theme at the Paralympics, otherwise they might never have been created. Their foundation is an archery competition for war invalids in 1948, organized by the neurologist Ludwig Guttmann in England. Since then, veterans have repeatedly taken part, and some nations recruit their athletes from the military. But Ukraine’s story at these games, the story of its sitting volleyball team, is a special, sad, elusive one.
140 athletes from Ukraine are in Paris, and were greeted with warm applause at the opening ceremony. As at the Olympics, many will dedicate their performances to the soldiers and have experienced the most adverse circumstances themselves. Around 3,000 top athletes are said to have joined the army since the war began, and more than 470 of them have died. Not everyone is convinced that the Paralympics are the right thing to do. Swimmer Makym Krypak, the most successful athlete at the Tokyo Games, is not taking part because he would rather help at home. The fact that 90 Russians are there under a neutral flag, 75 more than at the Olympics, also caused anger in Ukraine, and there will be a few direct duels in Paris. Two athletes, two of twelve sitting volleyball players, who could hardly have been more directly affected by the war, are there despite everything.
Korinez, 27, worked as a physiotherapist, “living a normal life,” he says, before Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022. After that, he immediately reported for military service, became a soldier in a defense squadron, later transferred to a brigade near Bakhmut as a medic until he was wounded and lost his leg.
A journalist wants to know how he became a Paralympic athlete so quickly. There are a few people in the hall that day to talk to the Ukrainians. His father, who is missing a leg himself, was a role model, Korinez replies: “The way he lives his life, goes fishing and hunting, picks mushrooms in the forest, everything is completely normal.” He himself now wants to be a role model for the many wounded veterans, and possibly many future athletes at the Paralympics.
Melnyk was determined to join the military and had to convince his superiors for eight months
Para-sports is a glorious discipline in Ukraine, and the team is traditionally successful. As challenging and full of barriers as life was for people with disabilities there even before the war, there is a network of regional centers in sport that enable them to train.
Dmytro Melnyk, 45, was an athlete in this system for a long time, and he was already at the Paralympics in 2016 with the sitting volleyball team. When he fell from a balcony at the age of 18, he broke his pelvis and hip. Since then, his left leg has been ten centimeters shorter than his right and he walks with a limp. Despite this, he wanted to join the military after the war began. So much so that he apparently had to really persuade his superiors. “It took eight months for me to convince them,” he says. He told his comrades that his gait was due to his shoes being too tight. Melnyk smiles as he tells this story.
Beforehand, on the volleyball court in the arena, the Ukrainians cheered every now and then, a few spectators waved blue and yellow flags. They lost without winning a set against the heavy favorite Iran, but at least they were briefly in the lead in the third set. Melnyk initially sat on the bench and was substituted on. Twelve days ago he was still at the front, he says. In recent months he has told several media outlets, including the US broadcaster NBC, that he trained his game there during breaks in action, such as serving and smashing against a brick wall.
The Ukrainians will now play against Germany in Paris. “We have every chance, we will fight to the end,” says Korinez about the ambitions for the Paralympics. He is also already talking about the more distant future: the Ukrainian team will become stronger, and disabled sports will continue to develop.
When Melnyk talks about the future, he says that he hopes to see all 35 soldiers from his unit alive when he returns to the front after the Paralympics. Then the translator breaks off the interview in tears. Dmytro Melnik salutes goodbye, smiling. It is probably meant to express confidence.