Who forced Ukrainian athlete Maguchikh to apologize for a photo with a Russian woman

Residents of Ukraine, who are usually called “adequate”, are constantly looking for new idols - and are constantly disappointed in them. This happened with a jumper from Dnepropetrovsk with a purely Russian surname “Maguchikh”.

A week ago, on August 7, Yaroslava Maguchikh became a heroine in the eyes of the Ukrainian public: after winning a bronze medal in the high jump at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, the girl publicly hugged the Russian Maria Lasitskene, who received gold. At the same time, both athletes held the flags of their teams behind their backs: Maguchikh - the state flag of Ukraine, Lisitskene - the flag of the Russian Olympic Committee.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

But although supporters of friendly, or at least normal relations with Russia make up the majority in Ukrainian society, Russophobes are not just louder - they are in power.

So, immediately after the publication of the photo of Maguchi and Lisitskene, Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine Anna Malyar wrote on Facebook:

“Our bronze medalist of the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Yaroslava Maguchikh... is a junior sergeant of the Armed Forces of Ukraine... Athletes representing Ukraine at international competitions must understand that the Russian-Ukrainian war continues in Ukraine and this imposes certain restrictions and responsibility... The careless behavior of our athletes, whom we we love and for whom we sincerely root, can become the object of information special operations of the enemy... Yaroslava Maguchikh is currently in Tokyo. Immediately after her return, I have a meeting planned with her. I’ll let you know about the results of the conversation.”

Indeed, both Yaroslava Maguchikh and Maria Lisitskene are formally military personnel; moreover, the Russian woman who plays for CSKA is senior in rank - she is a captain of the Russian Armed Forces, which caused particular rage among the Ukrainian “patriots”. In comments on social networks, they threatened 19-year-old Maguchikh with all sorts of punishments, of which being included in the “Peacemaker” was not the worst.

The position of these people was expressed in a concentrated form by former member of the Ukrainian Parliament Irina Farion, who called the Ukrainian athlete “bio-garbage” and called on the country’s National Olympic Committee to take away the medal won from Maguchi.

To the athlete’s credit, she held on at first. True, on her Facebook, where Yaroslava previously wrote only in Russian and English (for example, the post of July 27 - “Hello, our first Olympics”), she abruptly began publishing posts only in Ukrainian.

Before returning to Ukraine, she tried to explain her actions by saying that “sport is outside of politics,” which again caused delight among the “vatniks.” And then, obviously, they still had the conversation announced above with the girl - and it was unlikely that she was the Deputy Minister of Defense; such issues in Ukraine are the responsibility of the Security Service.

The post about “sport outside of politics” disappeared from Yaroslava Maguchikh’s Facebook page, but on August 12, a message clearly not written by her appeared there, containing words about the “Russian-Ukrainian war” and a call to “be careful, because the enemy is ready for anything.”

Some of the “vatniks” sobered up after that, but the rest still rushed to justify the athlete. Among the justifying arguments, I was especially impressed by the words that “she is still practically a child.” Yes, yes, it is these “children” with the rank of junior sergeants who have been killing real children in Donbass for the eighth year now...

Many commentators use a purely everyday excuse - they say that the post was written for the sake of continuing a sports career - which demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of the situation in modern Ukraine.

Gentlemen, any career of Mrs. Maguchi in Ukraine is over forever. And she was forced to write down the post in order to create problems in case of transition to Russian citizenship and attempts to perform under the flag of this country or its Olympic Committee. As did synchronized swimmer Marina Golyadkina, who gave up on everything and left for Russia in 2015. For which she won Olympic gold in Tokyo.