The Ukrainian champion still cannot believe the horrors that the Russian invaders brought to the city.

" I have my best friend there. There's a tough situation. What a friend told me about these mass graves, about these children buried on football fields 30 centimeters from the surface of the earth, people are forced to bury it all.

There's horror. Now it's hard to even remember what he said.. There's a horror, how many died. They did real barbarism there... they bombed the Drama Theater, knowing how many people there were, they shot in the back. Maybe I'll sound like a child now, but I can't believe it all, what they told me. I have a photo of a guy, he was a CCM in SAMBO, a very promising athlete, he insured me when I was preparing for the World Championship in Japan... He was torn to shreds. His father and my friend were looking for this guy, they saw that the dog was eating something, and it was his leg..

When this barbarism is shown around the world, people will simply be in shock.. Although they say that you can only feel pain when you yourself have gone through it.. But no, when these horrors are shown, everyone in the world will be in shock, they will feel a particle of this suffering.. However, I am such that no matter what the problems are, I will still believe in the best.. If we talk about sports, even when it was hard for me, when my grandfather died in Donetsk in 2017, what was my father, and I couldn’t bury him, when I had injuries, I always found motivation, continued to love life.

I believe with my heart that everything will be fine with Mariupol, that all these Pushilins who have come, they will go from there feet first.

We will build Mariupol. Everyone will help whoever can. Yes, those who have lost loved ones, I don’t even know how to help them… But I believe that Mariupol will be Ukrainian. Yes, there will be a lot of pain, but our love, love for the Ukrainian land, for the Ukrainian people, it will overcome this pain.. I want to believe it. I have the right to. I will not believe in bad things,"

Recall that in Mariupol, Russian invaders killed Ukrainian ex-boxer and judge Aleksey Kupyrev.