Ukrainian swimming coaches take refuge in slums of Istanbul
Beyazıt Şenbük - ISTANBUL
Two head coaches of the Ukrainian Paralympic National Swimming team, are struggling to continue their lives in a shanty house in Istanbul’s famous skid row, Hacı Hüsrev.
Irina Paveleva and Natalia Samorodina, who represented Ukraine in swimming at the 2004 Athens and 2008 Beijing Olympics and now coach disabled swimmers, fled the war with their little children and took shelter in a slum in Beyoğlu district.
The Ukrainian paralympic swimming team, which chose Istanbul for their camp on Feb. 17 under the leadership of two coaches, was preparing for the World Paralympic Swimming Championship.
They could not return to their country with the outbreak of the war on Feb. 24, and had to stay in Türkiye for five months as the violence of the conflict increased.
They returned to their country in July, but soon after they found themselves in one of the hottest spots of the war, which was raging again. As the war targeted the area around the Zaporizhia NPP, Paveleva and Samorodina decided to flee the country again, this time with their children, in October.
At the request of the parents of a 15-year-old disabled national swimmer whom they have been coaching since he was four, the coaches took with them Nikita Dudchenko, who has cerebral palsy.
“I need a facility where I can continue my training. I have to work every day because I want to give my family a championship that will make them forget all their pain,” Dudchenko said.
“The shanty house we live in is in very bad condition. There is no shower, we can’t take a bath, and the humidity is too much,” the coaches said. “Every day, we go to Kasımpaşa Sports Club to eat our fill. The education of the children has been left unfinished.”
Duran Arslan, one of the trainers of the Turkish Paralympic Swimming National Team, helped the Ukrainian coaches to find a home. “It is important that they continue to do sports in order to erase the psychological scars of the war.”
