For Ukraine, for their Freedom and Ours ! - CSO
European Fencing Championships in Antony: a tribute to five Ukrainian fencers who died as heroes for their freedom and ours!
18 July 2026
TRIBUTE
During their meeting with the Ukrainian national team, Pour l'Ukraine proudly wore t-shirts bearing the images of five fencers killed on the front.
Fedir Yepifanov, the youngest of these heroes, abandoned his international career at 18 to join the Ukrainian armed forces immediately after the large-scale invasion. He was killed on the front lines in the Zaporizhzhia region just over a year later, on December 13, 2023.
The head of press for the Ukrainian team, who was present during our meeting, told us that she herself had taken the photo of Yepifanov that appears on the t-shirt bearing his image. It is one of the very last images of him during a competition.
Several of the young athletes whom Pour l'Ukraine pays tribute to have relatives currently on the front lines, or who have been injured or killed there.
Thank you to all of them, and to Anna and Mikhail Ilyashev as well, for giving us some of their precious time amidst the competition. And congratulations to their teammate Olga Sopit, who was crowned European foil champion last night.
Thanks also to the representatives of Place Publique, the Kalyna association , and Russie-Libertés for their participation. and Wissous, Free Ukraine.
"For Ukraine, for their freedom and ours!" also condemns the presence at these Championships of eight Russian fencers linked to the security forces, including five military personnel – therefore NOT NEUTRAL. It expresses astonishment that they received visas to come and compete in France, serving the regime's propaganda.
Yana Egorian, the Fedorova of Russian fencing and a fervent supporter of Putin, is the most blatant example. She is, in fact, an ambassador for a Russian association involved in the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia (a war crime that led the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Putin in March 2023). This resulted in Egorian being sanctioned by the Ukrainian government last February. On Tuesday, she won the silver medal in sabre as a "neutral individual athlete." All she had to do to obtain this status was sign a sworn declaration of neutrality...
How can we accept that representatives of an aggressor country – a dictatorship responsible for countless war crimes and crimes against humanity – come to challenge its victims on French soil?
More details in our press release :
For more complete information on the close collusion between Putin's regime and Russian sport – which has produced the Sportokratura described by Lukas Aubin – see our website https://www.pourlukraine.com/la-guerre-cognitive/non-a-armee-des-athletes-de-poutine
