Load-shedding a reminder of war for Ukraine players at hockey World Cup

Load-shedding is a grim reminder of war-torn Ukraine for the country’s women players at the Indoor Hockey World Cup in Pretoria, where they remained on track to make the playoffs despite losing to the Czech Republic on Wednesday.     

“We are really trying to focus on the match when we are on the pitch, but when we are in the hotel, when we have Wi-Fi and internet connection, we search the news and watch everything going on at home,” said captain Yevheniia Moroz. 

The squad’s Ukraine-based players barely batted an eyelid when the electricity went out at their hotel. 

“My teammates came to my room [and said], ‘it feels like we’re at home because here there’s no electricity’.”

In Ukraine, people had two hours of power followed by a four-hour outage, she said. “If we need to live like this, if they’re thinking that they [Russians] will scare us with this, no. We will survive.”

Moroz now lives in Italy with her seven-year-old daughter but her husband has stayed on in Sumy, which she described as the women’s hockey capital of Ukraine, in the northern reaches, just 40km from Russia. 

The city was surrounded in the early stages of the invasion last year.

“I was really in a panic. It’s difficult, there were a lot of Russian planes and one of them was dropping bombs on the city, on the houses where people live,” she recounted, saying more than 20 civilians had been killed in one attack.

“My daughter was really afraid and I cannot answer her question. She’s asking me, ‘Mom, why [do] Russians want to kill us?’ I cannot answer it because I cannot explain it.”

Her husband insisted the two leave to join his sister who lives near Pisa when they had a “green corridor” in March last year. She hasn’t seen him in person since then. 

While she and four other players compete for Italian clubs, the others keep training in Sumy. “It’s really difficult because sometimes [their] training is interrupted by the [air raid] sirens and [they] have to go to the basement to wait. When it is safe again [they] will go back to training.”

The players are all professional, receiving stipends from the city and national government, though their grants have been cut since the start of the war. 

The government funded their trip to SA after they won bronze at the European indoor hockey championships in Hamburg in Germany in December. “If we maybe finished fourth or fifth we maybe will not be here.” 

Ukraine were second in Pool B at the World Cup after going down 2-4 to the Czech Republic, needing to be in the top four to advance to the quarterfinals on Friday. They play struggling Kazakhstan in their final group match on Thursday.

Russia has been barred by the International Hockey Federation. 

Moroz is against the International Olympic Committee move to allow athletes from Russia and Belarus to compete under a neutral flag at the Paris Olympics next year. 

“For me it’s really a strange thing when some people want Russian sportsmen [to play international] competitions. Sport is about friendship. 

“If you are part of your country and you represent your flag, your anthem, then be at home. I cannot imagine how can it be that I will be here [at a competition] and they will be part of this too.

“We have no electricity, we have no heating, some of our cities are destroyed, we cannot have normal training. We have no normal life.”

Moroz simply nodded when asked if she knew the SA  government was on friendly terms with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A naval exercise with SA’s Russian and Chinese counterparts off the KwaZulu-Natal coast is set to start less than a week after the Indoor Hockey World Cup ends on Saturday.  

“It’s crazy because you’re friends with a country that wants to kill other people. I have no words about this.”

Next week this time she will be back in Italy which, she says, is safe, but not home. “There is no winter. I like winter in Ukraine, with the snow, the frost. It’s cold.”

Several teammates will be back in Ukraine and their fitness coach faces a return to military duty, having received permission for the trip to Pretoria. 

Some of the players have friends who have been killed in the conflict and three weeks ago a coach whom Moroz knew from her local gym was killed.

“For me it’s like a nightmare,” said Moroz. “I want to wake up and say ‘oh, thank God, it was a dream, Ukraine is OK and everyone is alive’.”