"Cossacks didn’t have therapists, they had liquor." After being wounded, he was sent to work at TRC
“Sitting volleyball is when you constantly have to move around on your buttocks. But if the floor isn’t adapted, you can get injured, and it’s also hard to stay mobile on such a surface,” explains Yurii Brel, a veteran of the Russian-Ukrainian war. We’re standing with him in the sports hall of the Palace of Sports in his hometown of Chervonohrad. He brought us here to show us his pain — the limited opportunities for veterans in the city to engage in sports.
“Sport helps you adapt to civilian life. Because it’s important to keep yourself occupied — and here you’ve got two options: either sports, or 'literbol' [a slang term meaning alcohol],” Yurii says firmly.
After suffering a leg injury at the front, Yurii now gets around on crutches. Still, he decided not to give up his favorite sport — volleyball — but now has to play it sitting down. And due to the lack of a suitable indoor court in the city, the only option is to travel outside town to a lakeside beach, where he can play sitting on the sand.
He also swims there, weather permitting. That’s because the only two swimming pools in the city operate only during the heating season. But Yurii doesn’t always have time for out-of-town trips, since he works seven days a week — despite his injury, he wasn’t discharged from the army, but reassigned as a clerk at the Territorial Recruitment Center (TRC).
This material was created with the support of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany.
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