“If I did not return to Ukraine, what would I say to my children” Ukrainian tennis player Serhii Stakhovskyi joined the Territorial Defense Forces
Ukrainian tennis player Serhii Stakhovskyi retired from professional tennis several weeks before the war had started. He intended to do winemaking in 2022, but instead, he took up a gun to defend Ukraine. “If Ukraine will not exist, I will be a person without a state. I don’t know what a person without a state can do. I don’t want to be like that, and that’s why I’m here,” said the athlete.
He was on a family holiday when the Russian invasion happened, and once he got his wife and children to safety in Budapest, he went back to Kyiv to fight.
“Since childhood, I have never had the feeling that Russia can attack. My first understanding came in 2014. And, of course, after that, I looked into history, looked at the Chechen war, the Georgian war, all the wars they unleashed,” Serhii Stakhovskyi said.
