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"Still a Russian person!" Russian figure skaters capture national teams of other countries, while Ukrainians organize sabotage

Olena PavlovaSport
Russian figure skaters continue to compete in international competitions and spoil the mood of Ukrainians

Despite all the sanctions and suspensions, Russian figure skaters continue to perform at the highest level and win awards, having switched to the flags of other countries. At the European Championships, which ended this weekend in Tallinn, 27 skaters from the aggressor country competed out of 160 participants in total. Almost a sixth of them! And one of them even tried on the continental "gold". And the highest place of Ukrainians in Estonia was 11th in the pairs competition.

Georgia brought the largest representation of recent Russians to the championship - 5 skaters. And this is the same country that suffered from Russian military aggression a little over 16 years ago.

Russian natives Anastasia Metelkina and Luka Berulava were one of the favorites of the sports pairs. The partner has been playing for Georgia since 2019, and the partner since 2020, and they started skating together in 2023. Last year, they finished second at the European Championships and seventh at the World Championships.

And at the current continental tournament, Metelkina and Berulava had to settle for third place due to a failed short program. Interestingly, the change of flag did not affect the location and training of the pair, who are training in Perm with Pavel Slyusareenko and Yegor Zakroev.

Immediately after the suspension of the Russian athletes, dancers Diana Davis and Gleb Smolkin left the national team. Davis is the daughter of the controversial Russian coach Eteri Tutberidze, who represented Russia until 2022, including at the 2022 Olympic Games, where they took 14th place. But the sanctions forced them to look for a new homeland, and Georgia gladly granted them asylum.

In 2023, Diana and Gleb changed their sports citizenship and returned to competing under a different flag, explaining their decision by wanting to continue their careers: "We want to compete." But they have not yet reached the prize-winning places. And at this European Championship, they finished eighth.

In Tallinn, Georgian singles skater Anastasia Gubanova failed to confirm her status as the 2022 European champion, finishing second to Estonian Nina Petrikina. Gubanova still continues to live and train in St. Petersburg, but in 2021, the Georgian Figure Skating Federation announced that the Russian skater would join its national team. And now she will be able to carry the "Russian world" under a different flag.

Another "fugitive," Nikita Volodin, a native of St. Petersburg, who skated for Russia until 2022, became the European champion in the pairs competition, winning the 2016 CS Tallinn Trophy and bronze medal at the 2016 Youth Olympic Games, and in April 2018 won gold at the Russian Junior Championships.

However, he was not very lucky with his partners, and then, after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian invaders in February 2022, the aggressor country's skaters were suspended from competitions, and Volodin quickly fled to Germany. There he was paired with Minerva Fabienne Hasse and officially became a German from the 2023/24 season.

But Volodin revealed his whole self in a comment after winning the ISU Grand Prix final in Beijing: "Of course, I was pleased that they started talking about me again in Russia, because I am still a Russian person. My home school, which raised me, also showed that they were proud. I read everything, I was very pleased."

In addition, the Germans train with Russian coach Dmitry Savin, whose wards include the Hungarian couple with Russian heritage, Maria Pavlova and Alexei Sviatchenko, who took fourth place at this year's European Championships, representatives of the Netherlands, Moscow's Daria Danilova and Michelle Tsyba, and Poland's Julia Shchetynina and Michal Wozniak.

Of course, the Russians are delighted with the demand for their specialists, especially when Europeans are willing to go to the territory of the aggressor country to train. And the story about Savin in a leading Russian media outlet was headlined: "Our figure skating coach trains European champions". This is how sanctions and suspensions work for skating masters.

By the way, it was in the pairs competition that Ukraine's representatives performed best at the 2025 European Championships. 20-year-old Sofia Golichenko and 23-year-old Artem Darensky took 11th place in Tallinn. After the short program, they closed the top 10, skated the free skate with a personal best of 108.22 points, but this was not enough to finish in the top ten.

And last year, Artem noted that due to the large number of former Tricolor players in the pairs competitions, the European Championships already look like "some kind of Russian Cup." Due to the circumstances, Ukrainian athletes are forced to share a common space and common ice during warm-ups with people from the Russian Federation. And, of course, according to Ukrainian skaters, this affects the atmosphere on the sidelines of international competitions.

Some former Russians even try to get in touch with our skaters, while others are even a little mean. For example, Ukrainians are on their way to support, and one of the former Russians sees this and, blocking the way, sits in a toddy and starts spinning around his partner. Although our athletes do not remain in debt.

"They know very well that we can talk to their faces, and they try to avoid it. They try to say hello, to talk, but we don't make contact. Sometimes Ivan Shmuratko and I organize 'sabotage': leaving the room and closing the door, getting off the bus first, or sitting in an uncomfortable position when we go to breakfast. Or speak differently, with accents. This has been done for many years in a row, even before the invasion began," Darensky told Suspilne Sport.

Among the Russian figure skaters at the 2025 European Championships, the newly minted Frenchwoman Evgenia Lopareva also grabbed the award, taking second place in the dance duet competition with Joffrey Brissot. At the same time, three couples were separated by some tenths or even hundredths. And "silver," as the Russians themselves wrote, sensationally went to Lopareva and her partner.

Evgeniya became a French citizen in May 2022, the couple trains at the Montreal Academy, and despite this, her partner's place of deployment is Moscow. This season, Lopareva and Brissot's rhythm dance is eloquently set to the song "Rasputin" by Boney M... "Rasputin". And, as originally conceived, the track ends with the words "Oh, those Russians".

However, in November 2024, at the Warsaw Cup, this phrase strangely disappeared from the performance. As the former Russian explained later, they did it because of the judges.

"After we won the Tallinn Trophy, our French coach Roxanne Petetin shared with us that some of the judges had hinted to her in private conversations that we should consider a different final phrase in our rhythm dance. We thought that when such conversations started, maybe we should really experiment with the ending. This decision was made hastily and rashly, literally on the way from Tallinn to Warsaw," Lopareva said.

In addition to Georgia, Hungary brought four former Russians to the European Championship, which is not surprising given Prime Minister Orban's friendship with the Russian authorities. But there were also three players from the aggressor country in the Polish national team.

By the way, last year, the president of the International Skating Union (ISU), Kim Jae-young, was forced to answer media questions about the large number of former Russian representatives at international competitions. But his statement looked like an excuse, saying that the ISU adheres to the decision to exclude the Russian national team, and that national federations are responsible for the overrepresentation of Russians.

And in December 2024, it became known that the ISU had allowed Russian and Belarusian figure skaters to participate in the selection for the 2026 Winter Olympics. They will have the right to apply for international qualifying competitions in a neutral status.

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