Two-time world champion Alina Shaternikova: from ambition to service

Alina has a special gift for wounded soldiers in hospitals and clinics — small boxing gloves. Adult men, who often become concentrated and gloomy after the war, soften before our eyes, touchingly accepting this gift. And they are childishly happy to receive gloves from Alina Shaternikova herself, a three-time European and two-time world professional boxing champion, as well as the vice president of the National Professional Boxing League of Ukraine.

Without further ado

Alina started volunteering back in 2014: to raise funds for the wounded, in August of that year she auctioned off her championship belt, which she won in 2005. It was the award she won in the last fight of her career (against American Stephanie Dobbs). The belt was then sold for 20,000 hryvnias ($1,680), and the money went to help two wounded soldiers.

"In critical moments, I never panic, all my resources are instinctively mobilized, and I make decisions quickly," says Alina. "When our army and civilians stood up for defense last February, I clearly realized my task: to help the defenders and people who are in a difficult situation because of the war.”

Alina was buying and delivering food around Kyiv: for people at roadblocks, for people in bomb shelters, for a children's hospital. For pilots in Vasylkiv, she delivered sleeping bags, GPS, and accessories for aviation equipment.

Later, when the Russians were pushed back from the Ukrainian capital, Alina focused on the needs of wounded soldiers. She helps them solve medical and legal problems, arrange their hospital life, and find housing for their relatives who come to Kyiv from far away. Clothes, medicines, food, coffee beans for coffee machines, capsules for dishwashers, laundry detergent, air conditioners, boilers — this is the list of things Alina has had to buy for the injured soldiers.

"I don't usually organize fundraising through social media. I don't donate money to any volunteer organizations or charities," says Alina. "I prefer to provide targeted assistance to a specific person in a specific situation. I find out about the problem, determine what and how I can help, and involve my friends. I am well-known in Ukraine, so it is easier for me to find the necessary resources to help."

One such story concerned a family from Kyiv Oblast. During the occupation, Russians smashed their house to pieces with Grad rockets. It was impossible to live in a house without a roof, windows and doors, with mangled walls. And the owner had a son with a severe disability in her care.

"Alina asked me: ‘What kind of help do you need?’ Many volunteers asked me the same question, complained, promised help, and never came back. But Alina raised funds, brought building materials and people who cleared the rubble and made repairs. And this was literally within a month or two," Antonina, the owner of the house, told hromadske.

Shaternikova has many similar stories, but she does not like to talk about them.

"Why talk? You just have to work," she says. "For me, volunteering is a spiritual service. I have a gift for helping people, and I realize it in volunteering. If there had been no war, I would probably have ended up feeding sick children. And there is no religious fanaticism in this, even though I am a believer, there is spiritual enlightenment in this."

"I'm not interested in podiums anymore"

Alina started doing sports — kickboxing and boxing — from early childhood. Very soon she realized that nothing is impossible in life, that any dream turns into a goal that can be achieved.

Thanks to her perseverance, Alina became a world champion in women's boxing. And this was when the sport had not yet been included in the Olympic Games program (it happened only in 2012), and the fees for women in the ring, according to the boxer, were hundreds of times less than for men (until 1998, Alina was an amateur boxer, so she did not receive any fees at all and financed her participation in competitions on her own).

In the professional ring, Alina knocked out her opponents and was defeated only twice. After completing her boxing career, she mastered the profession of a top sports manager. And then she became the first (and so far the only) female commentator on international boxing matches in Ukraine.

"Ambition used to be important to me, and I pursued it at all costs. Some acquaintances, some projects, and some statuses. Standing on a pedestal, literally and figuratively. Now I have changed. I've had enough of it. I ask myself: will the realization of my ambitions mean a joyful and happy life for me? No? Then why? Now I value life harmony the most. And this is not because of my age (the athlete is 48 years old - ed.) or fatigue. This is the result of my spiritual growth. I used to be a robotic person programmed to satisfy my ambitions. Now I feel differently." 

According to Alina, she was pushed to these new feelings and the search for a new self by a deep life crisis she had to go through because of an unexpected betrayal. She, an athlete who was used to winning and was confident in her ability to control her own life at all times, felt like she had suffered a crushing defeat. But she managed to get over it.

"An athlete is not necessarily a warrior"

"After February 24, I discovered a lot of new things in myself and in people," says Alina. "I realized that if I have to shoot, I will shoot until I get killed. That I am not afraid of injury or death. That I can endure a lot of blood and other people's suffering. As for people, I realized that they are all different and that not every person has a sense of duty, not everyone considers such concepts as the statehood of their country and national freedom to be the highest value. And boxers or other athletes are mostly just athletes making a career, not warriors. For a long time, I believed that if a person fights for the best result every day, he or she is definitely a warrior."

According to Alina, before the war, many Ukrainian athletes lived and trained abroad, subordinating everything to preparing for competitions and winning, without delving into anything beyond their sporting interests. After February 2022, it was difficult for these people to realize that they were Ukrainian athletes, Ukrainian citizens with corresponding responsibilities.

"Not everyone can be Julia ['Tayra'] Paevska or Dmytro ['Da Vinci'] Kotsiubaylo. It is arrogance to despise the weak. You can train muscles, but you cannot train courage. A person either controls himself under fire or falls into a stupor. Someone is born to be a warrior, and someone is born to raise money for a sniper rifle. In each case, responsibility must be distributed," she believes.

With the beginning of the full-scale invasion, athletes, like other people, made their choice: they went abroad, volunteered or went to the front. According to the information provided to hromadske by the Sports Committee of Ukraine, since April 2022, about 300 Ukrainian athletes and coaches have died at the front and in the occupation.

People very often idealize sports stars, demanding that they be perfect in everything, including their civic position. But a boxer, a runner, a swimmer is just a person of a certain profession, like a driver or a baker. Just a person who can be mistaken in their assessments, have fears, and be afraid of the front, explains Shaternikova.

At the same time, Alina is firmly convinced that sport, as a part of life, cannot be outside of politics or rise above politics. Especially during the war, when it is necessary to clearly distinguish oneself from the enemy and all those who support it.

That's why, for example, last December, the Professional Boxing League of Ukraine protested to the World Boxing Association over the organization's decision to return boxers from Russia and Belarus to its rankings. Shaternikova praised Volodymyr Zelenskyy's decision to deprive Olympic medalists Kiryukhin and Sydorenko, who are running successful businesses in the Russian-occupied territory, of their presidential scholarships.

"Today, Ukrainian sport has become a part of our national resistance to the Russians," says Alina. "That's why our athletes have to train and participate in international competitions. To remind the world of Russian aggression, of the deaths of Ukrainians, of the destruction of our infrastructure, of our misery. Olha Kharlan, the Olympic fencing champion, refused to shake hands with her Russian rival, and look at the publicity this story received. We have once again reminded the world that sport is about honesty and dignity, that Ukraine stands for honesty and dignity. And this also contributes to victory."