Author: Ihor Stelmach

A charity fundraiser pitting Ukraine’s national soccer team against Bundesliga club Borussia Monchengladbach enabled the Ukrainians to round back into playing shape before a World Cup qualifying playoff match against Scotland in June. This was their first action since Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine on February 24. The May 11 friendly was played...

Steen Hansen is very familiar with long drives as a trucker, fleet owner and as a founding owner of the Aalborg Pirates in Denmark’s elite Metal Ligaen ice hockey league. For nearly 10 years Hansen has followed his top-ranked teal all over the Nordic land. Yet even with those countless hours of traveling, he was...

Ukrainian Paralympic Committee President Valeriy Sushkevych fears that the country’s outstanding program for disabled athletes is on the verge of collapse, if not already destroyed, following the launch of Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine on February 24. The war’s impact on funding and support has had a most crippling effect on the country. Ukraine had...

Seven young disabled Ukrainian swimmers and three coaches arrived in the Turkish town of Silivri, outside of Istanbul, on February 17. They came to participate in an elite two-week training program. Exactly one week later, their lives were turned upside down when Russia invaded Ukraine. One youngster was fortunate to make it to Poland with...

Russia’s war on Ukraine might have uprooted their lives and forced them to find refuge in Albania, but eight young Ukrainian track-and-field athletes continue to chase their sports dreams. While the four teenage girls and four boys hope to honor their homeland with sporting success, they are constantly worrying about their families back in Ukraine....

Major League Soccer (MLS) and the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) teamed up to play a charity match on April 27 to benefit Ukrainian relief efforts. The mixed teams, made up of players from both the MLS’s Portland Timbers and the NWSL’s Portland Thorns, played two 30-minute halves. The two squads wore colors of the...

Ukrainian Barry Trotz is a certain lock for the Hall of Fame someday. The ex-New York Islanders head coach has thus far enjoyed a most storied National Hockey League (NHL) career, and with a February 8, 2021, 2-0 win over the New York Rangers, still another chapter was written. Coach Trotz jumped to third all-time...

We have all seen the graphic images of war-torn Ukrainian cities and villages being bombarded by the military of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has taken it upon himself to try to rebuild a Soviet empire that collapsed 30 years ago. We have all witnessed and heard from Ukraine’s heroic president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the former...

Notwithstanding the supportive, well-meant mission statements espoused by the United Nations and the International Olympic Committee, the faultless victims trying to survive the war in Ukraine awake in the morning not sure if they will survive to see another sunrise. Among the innocent Ukrainians protecting themselves from Russian military forces on the ground and from...

Ever since Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine on February 24, many Italian National Sports Federations, the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) and Italian sports leaders have hosted and supported fleeing Ukrainian athletes by sharing their training facilities. On April 18, Ukraine’s Olympic Committee President Sergey Bubka, Ukraine’s Minister of Youth and Sport Vadym Guttasait...

On March 11, a 15-year-old youngster and his mother concluded a trek spanning some 54 hours and 5,000 miles. It was an odyssey that began in a car south of Kyiv and it meant the pair had to leave their family, friends and country behind so that the boy could keep living his life in...

The Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Poland Championships were held on April 9 in Warsaw. The national competition was open to athletes from clubs across the country, and it was the first time the cadet category of youngsters aged 12-17 were included in the Championships. The ongoing war in Ukraine has forced many young Ukrainian athletes...