Promising Ukrainian decathlete who 'could have gone to Olympics' dies

Promising Ukrainian decathlon champion and ‘true hero’ who ‘could have gone to Paris Olympics’ dies in battle

• Volodymyr Androshchuk, 22, died in battle near Bakhmut on January 25
• He was a ‘promising’ decathlete who ‘could have gone to the Paris Olympics’ 

A promising Ukrainian decathlon champion and ‘true hero’ who ‘could have gone to the Paris Olympics’ has died in battle.

Volodymyr Androshchuk, a decathlon U20 champion, died near Bakhmut on January 25.

On Twitter, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine said: ‘A promising athlete and a true hero.

‘He could have been able to participate in the Olympic Games in Paris, if Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine.

‘Why do Russians still have this privilege?’

Volodymyr Androshchuk, a decathlon U20 champion, died in battle near Bakhmut on January 25

On Twitter, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine said: ‘A promising athlete and a true hero. He could have been able to participate in the Olympic Games in Paris, if Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine’

Anton Gerashchenko, former deputy minister of the Ministry of Inner Ukraine, paid tribute to the athlete.

He said: ‘Volodymyr Androshchuk, Ukrainian track and field athlete, member of the national team, died in combat near Bakhmut. 

‘RIP, Volodymyr. We keep losing our best people.’

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Family and friends of 22-year-old Mr Androshchuk said their goodbyes to the sportsman-turned-soldier on Wednesday.

They were seen crying as they lined up at his open coffin.

At his funeral, in the western Ukrainian town of Letychiv, friends of his declared passionately that Russians should be excluded from the Olympics next year. 

They said they were bitter that Mr Androshchuk lost the chance to compete on the world’s most prestigious sports stage.

Mr Androshchuk volunteered for the military and was hit by shrapnel in Bakhmut last week.

It comes as a pro-Putin mercenary who waved the ‘skull of a dead Ukrainian’ in front of crowd and called for the killing of civilians was shot in the head.

Igor Mangushev, 36, is ‘in grave condition’ following the possible ‘warning hit’.

In the early hours of Saturday, Mangushev was taken to hospital in Stakhanov in Russia’s eastern Donetsk region with a gunshot wound to the head, The Telegraph reports.

Graphic pictures showing Mangushev lying bloodied on a hospital bed have been shared on social media by his friend Boris Rozhkin, who has described his condition as ‘grave’.

Family and friends of 22-year-old Mr Androshchuk said their goodbyes to the sportsman-turned-soldier on Wednesday (Pictured: a fellow serviceman holding a photo of Mr Androshchuk)

At his funeral, in the western Ukrainian town of Letychiv, friends of his declared passionately that Russians should be excluded from the Olympics next year

Pro-Putin activist Mangushev vowed in his sick rant: ‘We’ll make a goblet out of your skull’

Doctors are said to have determined he was shot at close range by someone using a handgun. No further details of the attack are known at present.

Mangushev provoked revulsion last August, when footage emerged of him apparently waving the skull of a Ukrainian soldier killed in Mariupol on stage.

The twisted ultranationalist said: ‘Why can’t there be any reconciliation?

‘Ukraine must be de-Ukrainized. The Russian lands of Novorossiya must be returned back.

‘We are not at war with people of blood and flesh. We are at war with an idea — Ukraine as an anti-Russian state.’

Holding the skull, he was quoted by Astra media as saying: ‘We’re alive and this guy is already dead.

‘Let him burn in hell. He wasn’t lucky. We’ll make a goblet out of his skull.’

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