in retrospect a link in Putin’s pursuit of Russian invincibility

Every day, 59-year-old Kosta Poltavets receives photos from Kharkiv. Places he knows from the past, where he was born and grew up, have been bombed to the ground. “These images are more intense than what we see here on television,” he says. The horrors cut in. “I will never forgive and forget.”

His sister-in-law and her two daughters, aged 3 and 8, fled the city at the start of the war and have been living at Poltavet’s home in Heerenveen since the beginning of March. He also knows what it’s like to run away. In 1994 Poltavets left Kharkiv. He felt threatened in the crumbling Soviet Union by a sudden rise in anti-Semitism.

The flight of his sister-in-law and all those other Ukrainians now is incomparable to his then, he emphasizes. He felt personally unsafe and made the rational decision to leave. Today’s violence is arbitrary. Every apartment, every house and every citizen can be a target. The enemy kills indiscriminately. And whoever flees now, flees headlong.

His half brother Dmytro, they have the same father, has stayed behind in Kharkiv to fight. ‘War is not for women and children,’ says Poltavets.

National coach Russia

Poltavets consciously chose the Netherlands in 1994. He knew people there from the triathlon, the sport he still practices fanatically. He quickly found his way thanks to the sport, ended up as a trainer in long track speed skating and received a Dutch passport.

In 2010 he was appointed as the national coach of Russia. Under his leadership, the country grew, after a number of lean years, into a successful skating nation. He was the architect, first as a coach on the ice, later as the one directing the other trainers and responsible for the structure.

In his first season as national coach, Ivan Skobrev became world champion all-round. In the years that followed, Denis Yuskov became three times world champion at 1,500 meters, Pavel Kulizhnikov dominated the sprint numbers and Natalya Voronina sharpened the world record in the 5,000 meters on her way to her world title. That was nice from a sporting point of view, but looking back there is another element to his success. ‘With the victories I have made a contribution to the system’, is Poltavets’ wry observation.

He sees that under Putin a new generation has been raised, a generation of young people who had to believe in the invincibility of the country and who now serve as soldiers at the front. Poltavets makes the comparison with top sport: ‘You shouldn’t watch the Milan Games in 2024 now if you want to be successful, but much further.’

Putin’s strategy

And Putin looked far ahead. For this reason, education has become increasingly nationalistic, the reins have been tightened in the media and war films have been shown on Russian television for years, spectacular films in which the Russians are the heroes. “When you see that day in and day out, you start to believe in it.”

Sport was a cog in that same machinery. ‘When athletes win, that leads to a lot of pride in Russia.’ Victories were published in the media. Thus successfully on the sports field the minds were ripened for the desire for success on the battlefield.

Poltavets now sees how that worked, but he did not realize that in the years that he was national coach. ‘As a professional I was focused on achieving sporting goals. Not just for Russia, but to develop the sport of skating in general,” he says. “Only retrospectively do I see what it contributed.”

He himself did not feel that he was part of a propaganda machine or a larger Russian sports system. Thanks to a progressive chairman of the federation, he was able to operate independently. ‘That was a unique setting and not possible in other Russian sports.’

That independence was sometimes viewed with suspicion. His Dutch passport and past with the skating teams of DSB and TVM did not help. ‘I was sometimes said by old-timers in skating that I was a foreign agent, who would be out to destroy Russian skating.’

Child of two cultures

Poltavets does not regret his time in Russia. “This escalation was not there yet. And I didn’t ask those questions.’ But had he known Vladimir Putin’s plans for his native country, he would never have done it. ‘Absolutely not.’ As far as he is concerned, all human and ethical boundaries have been crossed in Ukraine.

Putin has painted the situation between the two countries in black and white: Russians versus Ukrainians. But that’s a forced image. The reality of the region is more colorful. ‘I have two nephews. One lives in Belgorod in Russia, the other in Kyiv.’

The multi-colored also applies to him. ‘I am a child of two cultures,’ he says. His family name is rare, but typically Ukrainian. During his childhood in the Soviet Union, his father taught him about the history of his country, its poetry and literature.

He was raised bilingual. In Soviet times, Russian was compulsory in school and in the newspaper. He spoke Ukrainian in family circles. He spent his summer vacations with his grandmother in a kolkhoz in Luhansk. Like a true cowboy, he had to round calves on horseback. ‘When I returned to Kharkiv after three months, I only spoke Ukrainian. Then there was panic because I didn’t speak Russian anymore when I started school.’

Those in power left little room for Ukrainian culture. Poltavets’ grandfather, as a professor of economics at the University of Kharkiv, ran into trouble when he gave his lectures in the national language and not in Russian. “That was not the intention in Stalin’s time, any more than in Putin’s time.”

Poltavets’ father was an accomplished sportsman, first a cyclist and later a skater. Because of his Jewish wife, he was not allowed to travel abroad, so they created a piece of the world at home.

At home in Friesland

Athletes, journalists, artists and scientists regularly visited his parents. Ideas from philosophers such as Nietzsche, Kant and Schopenhauer were discussed. They listened to western music. The young Poltavets listened in. ‘It was discussing on the edge of what was forbidden. We knew not only how to read and write between the lines, but how to live between the lines.’

It has shaped him, but not definitively. ‘My base is in the Soviet Union, but my real development has come in the Netherlands, as a person and as a professional.’

He is at his place in Friesland. And yet almost every day he tends to pack his things and leave for his native country. To fight against the Russians. His brother constantly urges him to stay here. From the Netherlands he can achieve more than with a gun in his hand in Ukraine.

He is busy arranging practical matters such as school for his brother’s children. And joining the skating club, because the love for the sport runs deep in the Poltavets family. His oldest niece has already been on the ice three times in Thialf.

She also skated in Kharkiv with her father, who was a professional short track speed skater. ‘He is the same age as Sjinkie Knegt and Daan Breeuwsma. They also know each other’, says Poltavets, who had both Dutchmen under his wing as a youth trainer. Brother Dmytro ended his sports career in 2015, with 35th place at the World Short Track Speed ​​Skating Championships in Moscow. Now he is a policeman and fights with the army. The internet is working and they are in daily contact.

Russia banned from sports matches

In Friesland it is now time to improvise. It is striking to Poltavets how much support there is for Ukrainian refugees among private individuals, but that the authorities initially lagged behind. The bureaucracy can sometimes drive you crazy, he thinks. Arranging living money, opening a bank account or taking out a telephone subscription is a crime, because many Ukrainians do not have the correct identity papers. “Then you end up in a vicious circle.” That situation has now improved.

Poltavets does what he can, also for other Ukrainians. He has a lot of contact with former football player Yevgeny Levchenko. Together with him and other friends and acquaintances, they managed to get several minibuses with clothing and other relief supplies to the Polish-Ukrainian border.

He was requested by the Ukrainian skating association to represent their interests for the time being. In addition, he arranged national competition uniforms for the national inline skating association of the country. On his phone, scrolling past a terrible war image, he shows a picture of the blue-yellow inline skating suits.

Poltavets thinks the exclusion of Russian athletes from international competitions is more than justified. In fact, if it is up to Poltavets, the Russians must be banned from international sport for at least five years. “If they still want to do international competitions, they’ll do it with North Korea.”

He still has contact with some of his former pupils. They have expressed their horror at the invasion of Russia. Some do not currently live in Russia and have the opportunity to do so without further ado. Others write in veiled terms because of the regime’s surveillance. “Their messages don’t change the situation, but it’s nice to get them.”

Ukrainian morality

He is discouraged that one man, President Putin, has managed to bend the country to his will. “I have nothing against the Russian people, but Russia is ruled by a manual gearbox,” he says. If Putin doesn’t act, nothing will happen, but if he wants something, then it will happen.

He is convinced that Ukraine will prevail. “It’ll be hard because it’s like fighting with a bow and arrow against tanks.” But the big advantage is the morale of the Ukrainians. They are in danger of losing or losing the existence they have built up in thirty years of independence. ‘Think about what kind of motivation you have then.’