There are heroes without capes and Enver Ablaev, without wishing or imagining it, resembles the reporter Ken Clark, who worked like any other citizen during the day and, when called for help, would run to a nearby phone booth to transform into Superman.
This is not a fictional hero with superpowers, but rather a flesh and blood one, like many other anonymous heroes who emerge every day in Ukraine, defending themselves from the Russian invasion: Enver Ablaev, is the national coach of the Ukraine Olympic team. air skiers, who paused his work as an elite sports trainer, to travel clandestinely at night, risking his life on the way, to transport and distribute medicine, food and everything necessary to the cities affected by the Russian invasion in Ukraine.
Enver Ablaev had just returned to kyiv with the national team to celebrate having once again conquered the Olympic podium. The athlete Oleksandr Abramenko was not the favorite to win a medal, but he did it unexpectedly. Having tested positive in the rigorous daily COVID tests, athlete Oleksandr Abramenko and Oleksandr Okipniuk had to quarantine; a few hours before the final; the athlete Oleksandr Abramenko tested negative and without having practiced, he barely managed to arrive in time to compete and win the silver medal in aerial jump.
The fireworks exploded over the sky of Beijing 22 with the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics on February 20 and it was all joy, but four days later when they arrived in Ukraine, the noise was different, it was the noise of the siege military with tanks and bombings in different Ukrainian cities by Russian troops. The joy of such an Olympic feat soon ended. On February 24, Russian military troops arrived in Ukraine, starting a cruel and bloody war that does not respect civilians.
More than five weeks have passed and all men over 18 and under 60 have stayed to fight for their country. The new coach of the gold medalist in Pyonchang2018 and silver medalist in Beijing 22, is no exception. Ablaev has left his job as a National Preparer to be in charge of moving urgent merchandise to kyiv, from Mukachevo, his hometown, located in western Ukraine, on the border with the Hungarian nation, to kyiv and other cities.
“I don’t know if I’m going to return home, every time I start that journey I know that it may be the last time I see my family. That 9-hour journey, now with the war, I do in 22 continuous hours of driving. I go out at night through corridors that we assume are free of danger, to transport everything that the civilian population, hospitals and our armed forces need.”
The military by profession and volunteers, defend the capital city of kyiv, which stops the Russian military advance.
“We are all here, fighting for Ukraine, defending it from an unjust invasion that threatens to make us disappear, we just want them to leave Ukraine,” Ablaev replied, in an interview from the mountains of Mukachevo, a quiet farming town that Russian violence has not arrived yet.
Mukachevo has 80,000 inhabitants, but in the third week of war, it was overcrowded with 300,000 Ukrainian refugees, mostly mothers, children and babies in arms, who sought refuge in that part of the country, escaping from the danger of the hundreds of missiles launched at the south and center of the nation.
“Baby food, food for everyone, medicine and first aid items are needed, because soldiers are often wounded, they cannot leave the front to go to the hospital and they have to be treated in a basic way right there” – we need help inside Ukraine .
Ablaev is married to Svitlana and with her he has two children under the age of 5, Amina and Ilias. His parents live in the Crimean peninsula, part of Ukraine occupied by Russia since 2014.
“Every day I tell my wife to leave the country with our children. She would be safe and I would have more time to dedicate myself to preparing my constant transfers to the most needy areas. But he doesn’t want to leave me here, he prefers us to be together in Ukraine.”
The World Junior Games in Valmalenco Italy have just concluded this past weekend. Enver decided not to go as a coach to stay to distribute the aid that comes from all over the world through a Ukrainian Foundation called House of Mercy (House of Charity) but the mood of the young athletes was not optimal, given the circumstances at home.
“I decided that Oleksandr Abramenko, my Beijing 22 medalist, would go in my place, but then I also went to the World Cup, and I came with my family to the final, to make sure that the young athletes could concentrate on competing and rest mentally from the horror that we lived through. in Ukraine. We obtained a first and a fourth place, the momentary joy we offered as part of our fight, as part of our message to the world in the face of the deep pain that all Ukrainians carry, as long as Vladimir Putin’s war against my country does not end “.
At the time of writing this interview, I must mention that weeks before I met coach Ablaev, who asked me for help with baby food, diapers and hygienic products for women in Mukachevo.
The task was not easy, as journalists we are used to carrying the news, to interviewing, but it is not easy to organize help and less urgently in the space of a week. It was about feeding 300 babies, they had arrived in Mukachevo and food was scarce, we had to ask the city of Herborn where I live, to join a new collection, when there are plenty of organizations asking for help for the refugees from Ukraine and it should happen very Quick.
Fortunately, 200 boxes of food and diapers were sent to Mukachevo. The joy of contributing fades in the face of reality, the war, far from ending soon, threatens to spread as well as internal needs, but, I am not the exception when I say, that I felt that I could not sit still without doing something, seeing the cruelty of this unjustified war, even though my job is journalism.
The House of Charity is a Foundation directed by Baptist Pastor Vasyl Fenchak in Uzhgorod Ukraine since January 2003. More than 100 people work in the facilities that have an orphanage with 60 children, two nursing homes and people without family. Since the war began, they have prepared 1,500 meals a day and in the last 5 weeks alone they have distributed 400 tons of humanitarian aid.
“Thanks to the world for the solidarity and Germany for the help, but we need more. We need NATO to close the airspace to be able to defend ourselves without killing more innocent civilians, or destroying the wealth and architectural beauty of my country, which has breathed freedom and independence for 30 years and we want to continue like this” Ablaev repeated that speech that we have heard from the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Vitali Klitschko is the Mayor of kyiv, who together with his brother Wladimir Klitschko are united at the forefront of the strategy to prevent the Russian military from entering the capital. Both brothers are former World Boxing Champions, important public figures, ambassadors of goodwill and the sport; For this reason, I met Vitali Klitschko, who, before retiring from boxing and becoming a politician in his native country, gave me an interview as World Boxing Champion whose most important aspects of his biography are included in my book The Business of Pain. He would never imagine that he would see that Champion, wage a war against the Kremlin.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has convulsed Germany, which effectively considers that there is war in Europe. The management of pro-refugee aid is unstoppable and the economic and food contribution flows generously to Poland, Moldova, Romania and Slovakia, the nations that have received the more than 4 million Ukrainian refugees. Berlin has done the same and several cities have shelters and the German civil organization has facilitated offering and sharing temporary homes with refugee families.
As long as there is an attempt at a diplomatic settlement, NATO will not intervene because Ukraine does not belong to this group of nations, the war continues. The Germans have seen products become more expensive and the prices of everything rise, especially the threat of the non-supply of gas from the Russian nation. The economic crisis will be severe, but they do not seem to care as much as sanctioning Putin with an embargo on his economy, aware of the greater significance of the dangers of this armed conflict so close to home: the use of chemical weapons and Russian provocation in nations of NATO that provokes a third world war.
Enver Ablaev left Italy for the Ukraine, but before that he left his youth team in Switzerland, training at the Olympic Center, to save those young athletes from the struggle. However, this trainer has the mission of returning to the country by his own decision and continue distributing medicines and food, risking his life until the war is over. There are heroes without capes.
· The help that is required in Ukraine can be directed through House of Mercy among many other institutions that help. The Casa de la Caridad needs bandages, medicines to stop bleeding, pain relievers, and pasta, rice, sugar, salt, oil, and flour to bake bread.
This article was first published in Los Angeles Times in Spanish.