Athletes of War | movie | 2024 | Official Trailer - video Dailymotion

Russian Invasion of Ukraine from the perspective of Ukrainian Olympic athletes and their unique struggles of boycotting  | dG1fRmVJY08ta3VKbm8

Transcript

00:00Before the process itself, at this moment, you don't really think about anything.

00:07The whole negative is washed away from you and everything is bad.

00:30It's absurd.

00:31Athletes with a Russian or a Belarusian passport must compete only as individual neutral athletes.

00:41Any flags, white, neutral, they are in the blood of Ukrainian citizens.

00:46The IOC basically says nobody has the right to compete at the Olympics, essentially, unless we say it's okay.

00:54There is no place for aggressive states like Russia and anyone who's helping them, like Belarus, in the peaceful Olympics.

01:01Russian athletes, they support openly or they stay silent, which is equal to support.

01:07I don't respect that.

01:25I don't know why Russia is invading our country and what it needs.

01:30To kill children, people, just like that. That's their goal. To destroy.

01:35Ukrainians have no place to prepare, no electricity, no heat.

01:40There was an explosion, I was knocked down from the ground.

01:43From the moment I got up to this moment, I never thought about the fact that my life was over.

01:50London Marathon is very important.

01:52Roman wants to show to society that after we've lost, life will not end.

01:59I would like the International Olympic Committee to come to the territory where the entire cities are destroyed

02:08so that they understand that it is impossible to talk about the equality of athletes in this situation.

02:14Will the IOC let everything slide with Russia because of what they've done to help the movement?

02:22I don't want to go out with them even for a moment, for a competition,

02:29shake their hands or fight, for example, with them.

02:35We have the motivation to show even more strength and power in competitions.

02:41It's very difficult, but in any case, all wars end.

02:47Ukraine will prevail, Ukraine will survive.

02:50The question is how many lives we will have to lose to win.