Kickboxing, military drills, running through underground tunnels and handling hand grenades: Vitali Klitschko - the multimillionaire former boxing champion and now Kyiv’s hero mayor - says he always thought his military upbringing as the son of a Soviet Air Force general in Ukraine would prove invaluable in defending his home country.
The strange fact of it is it’s not the “crazy Americans” he’s ended up fighting against in his twelfth year as the capital’s mayor, but the Russian nation his own father so proudly fought for.
“This is our home. We will fight,” Kazakhstan-born Klitschko told said this week as he advised his people to “spend time in the bunkers” and imposed a 35-hour curfew on the city amid the intensifying of Russian attacks.
Since the beginning of the invasion, the former heavyweight boxer has remained grim-faced and firm, climbing through rubble and addressing his people in front of smouldering buildings. Klitschko says he is ready to fight on the frontline himself to defend Ukraine’s future as a “modern, democratic country”. “I believe in Ukraine, I believe in my country and I believe in my people,” he told reporters when the war first started.
Father-of-three Klitschko, 50, is married to Russian model and tennis player Natalia Egorova and is the only heavyweight boxer in history to have reigned as world champion in three different decades. He and his brother, Wladimir, were so notorious in heavyweight circles that their fighting years became known as the ‘Klitschko era’, with the pair developing the nicknames Dr Ironfist and Dr Steelhammer in their boxing heyday.
But eldest brother Vitali’s Dr Ironfist moniker may take on more meaning yet as he leads Kyiv’s 2.8 million residents into battle. The former athlete and keen chess player moved into politics full-time after retiring from boxing in 2013, being elected as Kyiv’s mayor in 2014 and currently serving his second stint after winning the 2020 elections by almost 300,000 votes. He has long been touted as a future president of Ukraine and recent days have seen him become a symbol of his city’s resolve as Russian troops intensify their attacks on the Ukrainian capital.
Despite being high-profile targets, he and his brother have taken centre-stage in the war so far, sharing updates from liasons with president Volodymyr Zelensky and standing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of cameras in matching blue puffer coats to appeal to international partners to show their full support.
Klitschko previously said he felt let-down by Germany, where he lived for 20 years while he was a professional athlete, as it had refused to provide Ukraine with vital defence systems. Shortly after, Germany announced it would in fact be sending weapons to the country to help it defend itself against the aggression.
Klitschko’s three children, Yegor-Daniel, Elizabeth-Victoria and Max (named after the former world heavyweight champion Max Schmeling), have grown up knowing only a free, independent Kyiv and he is determined for it to stay that way. He has appealed for food, medication and basic supplies, saying his city was “at the border of a humanitarian catastrophe”.
He has also spoken out against Russian interference, warning his residents only to trust information from official sources after the Associated Press reportedly falsely quoted him saying Kyiv was surrounded and it was therefore impossible for civilians to escape the city. He has since blamed the comments on Russian internet publications, writing on his Telegram channel this weekend: “Russia continues to fight against Ukraine not only with military weapons, but also with information... Do not believe lies!”
Of course, this is far from the only battle in Klitschko’s mayoral career so far. Shortly after moving into politics he confronted Russia’s President Putin over the annexation of the Crimea and the elections for his second term took place during the first year of the Covid pandemic (his city Kyiv is - coincidentally - a sister city of Wuhan in China, and he was praised for acting swiftly, creating a taskforce to buy life-saving equipment and putting his city into lockdown long ahead of other’s).
In 2020, Klitschko told reporters that tackling the pandemic had been the greatest fight of his career. But if the intensifying invasion is anything to go by, Kyiv’s steely leader is likely to be needing that iron fist more than ever in the weeks to come.
