Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko are very rich, they made their money mainly in the boxing ring. Their fights inspired millions. They never fought each other, today they fight together: for Ukraine, if necessary also with arms, they say. Nobody thinks that is empty talk.
When Wladimir Klitschko had the biggest payday of his great career in mind, he waved it off. It is estimated that a rematch against Anthony Joshua would have brought the Ukrainian, who was adopted by German boxing fans and who eventually became a superstar in the USA, which was blessed with heavyweight world champions, 30 to 50 million euros. In April 2017, Klitschko lost to the British in a big battle at London’s Wembley Stadium.
He could have taken the money, in boxing the stock market is distributed according to the value of the fighter for the fight, there is no prize money. Klitschko, then 41 years old, would only have to drag himself into the ring. But he realized his time was up. After 20 years at the top of the world, he was physically and mentally exhausted. And he broke up. Wladimir Klitschko is not a brawler, not a rip-off. Wladimir Klitschko is a clever man, a strategist. Someone who thinks very carefully about what he says and what he does. And proclaims: “We must prepare to take up arms to defend our country.”
Klitschko is fighting on the front lines of a war that swept his country over the past week. “It is love, love for my city, my home, my family, my neighbors, my daughter, that brought me here today, that I took this initiative and now I am involved in this territorial defense.” The boxer volunteered for his country’s reserve army under the impact of the Russian attacks on Ukraine.
“I have no choice”
The worldly boxer, who lived in Los Angeles for a long time and whose company is based in Hamburg, sends emotional appeals into the world. “Every day you go to work. With that you help to pass cartridges to your army – so to speak. And to shoot at us … your – as you call us – brothers and sisters,” he called out to Russians and Belarusians resistance up. It is a call to strike for peace. He also repeated the request “to the world to stop this war that Russia started” on Saturday: “Civilians have been shot down by rockets … This is happening in the heart of Europe. There is no time to wait. Because the whole thing is leading to a human catastrophe… Stop this war! Now.” Klitschko’s front is no longer limited to the boundaries between camera and reality. The 45-year-old is in Kyiv with his brother Vitali. The mayor of the city and one of the most famous figures in Ukraine.
Along with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the first heavyweight boxing world champion from the former Soviet Union is one of Vladimir Putin’s harshest critics. Anyway, his voice is the loudest in the world. “Sick” is Putin, he told the “Tagesspiegel” at the end of 2014 in the light of Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. Putin has achieved what he never thought possible, namely inciting the two sister nations against each other. In early 2022, Vitali Klitschko described Putin as a gangrene that had swept through Europe. “We will not allow you to bring back the Soviet empire, which we have always rejected,” he told the Russian president. Ukraine has “chosen the European path”.
And in 2015, the former boxer, who gave up his title as a world champion to concentrate on his political career and never returned to the ring, demanded a strong response to Russian aggression: “If we let Putin continue, at some point Russian soldiers will be on the Maidan.” The otherwise lively square is almost ghostly deserted these days. Putin has Kyiv attacked, Vitali Klitschko assured on Sunday that there were no Russian troops in the Ukrainian capital. “Kyiv is not completely surrounded. The Ukrainian army is fighting hard in the outskirts, and the Russian army has suffered many losses,” he told “Bild” on Sunday evening. In the Telegram news channel, he referred to false information that Russian troops had surrounded the city of millions. “Our military, law enforcement and territorial defenses continue to seek out and neutralize saboteurs.” In the evening, an air alarm was triggered again in Kyiv.
Vitali Klitschko, who has long been in the Kremlin’s crosshairs, is holding out in Kyiv. He has recently appeared on his social media channels at target practice, and in March of last year he had received media attention on effective anti-tank defense. Now, when asked by a reporter on British morning television “Good Morning, Britain” whether he would stay in Kyiv and fight as well, he replied: “I have no choice, I have to do it. I will fight.”
Questionable alliance
While Wladimir Klitschko boxed until 2017, his brother Vitali has only been fighting politically for many years. In 2006 and 2008 he failed the attempt. to become mayor of Kyiv. In 2010 he founded the UDAR, the “Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reforms”. He wanted to bring Ukraine closer to the EU. In 2014 he finally became mayor of the capital Kyiv. The political end of the then head of state Viktor Yanukovych, who was ultimately swept away by the protests, is very fresh.
Klitschko led the protests on the Maidan in 2013. Later, when the old nomenklatura had moved out of City Hall, the new mayor himself aroused suspicion: some said the transition had gone too smoothly. In addition, Klitschko had taken on old staff who were not supposed to survive the protests on the Maidan politically. In order to get rid of the old leadership, Klitschko – and this caused criticism both in Germany and in Ukraine – allied himself with the representatives of the anti-Semitic and nationalist Svoboda party. The Friedrich Ebert Foundation condemned the behavior of the opposition around Klitschko: They did not clearly distance themselves from Svoboda’s anti-Semitic, xenophobic and racist rhetoric and had thus “freed Svoboda from the stigma in the eyes of the public, legitimized it” and gave it the appearance “as be equal as a partner with other parties”.
Svoboda refers to the anti-Soviet freedom fighter Stepan Bandera, who made an alliance with the German Wehrmacht and the Nazis in the 1930s. At that time, Bandera formed the UPA partisan army based on fascist models, which actively participated in the extermination of Jews in western Ukraine. Party leader Tiagnibok, then a close ally of opposition leader Klitschko, openly bemoaned the influence of “Moscow’s Jewish mafia” in 2004. In 2012, the Simon Wiesenthal Center placed Tiagnibok fifth on its list of the worst anti-Semites in the world. “We have different ideologies, but two things unite us: we are fighting against today’s rulers, and we want European values in our country,” Klitschko said at the time when he chose his allies.
It is simply not possible “to change everything immediately, but we are changing gradually and with concrete actions for our city,” replied the battle-hardened politician. Klitschko never became a hero of the Euromaidan; in early 2014 he was hissed at by the remaining protesters. For a long time, his political capital is that he is not suspected of being dependent on old cliques: he has made his enormous fortune transparent in sport and above all abroad. And he’s a familiar face in the world.
Hollywood star prays for ‘friends and family’
Wladimir stood by his brother on the Maidan, but he also had other things to do during this time: he defended his world title twice in 2014, and in December he became the father of a daughter. The mother is Hollywood star Hayden Panettiere, the couple separated in 2018. Both are apparently still connected. She prays “for my family and friends” in Ukraine, Panettiere writes on Instagram, “and for everyone who is fighting”. She wished “I was there fighting with you guys! For now, I’m asking those of us who can’t be there to stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and show your support for #democracy.”
Wladimir Klitschko is now back in Ukraine, where mother Nadesha lives. Wladimir Rodionowitsch Klitschko, the father of the Klitschkos, had already died in 2011. The Red Army officer was himself part of a fateful tragedy in the history of the former Soviet Union: as a colonel in the Air Force, he coordinated helicopter operations at the reactor ruins after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. 25 years later, at the age of 64, he lost the fight against cancer after a long and serious illness. A few days after Wladimir Klitschko’s World Championship match against Britain’s David Haye, in which he united the belts of the four largest associations in the Klitschko family, Wladimir Senior died in July 2011 at the family home in Kyiv.
“Face that Putin also wants to destroy”
Wladimir Klitschko’s daughter Kaya is no longer in the city where she goes to school. “She is safe and not in Ukraine,” said Panettiere. Vitali Klitschko has three children, his family lives in Hamburg with his wife Natalia. In an interview with the “Bild” newspaper, Wladimir Klitschko announced: “We will win this senseless war. You cannot take our will. The will is the strongest weapon. We will defend our country to the last drop of blood!”
And that is to be taken literally. “They want to save their country. They’re not gossips, they’re not fantasists,” said RTL/ntv sports director Andreas von Thien, who had accompanied both Klitschkos to fights in the ring for many years. “They won’t accept that another country invades their homeland. They will use any means necessary to resist it. They will go to the extreme.” Nobody doubts that both of them are serious. “The two will fight for the freedom of Ukraine. Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko will do everything possible,” said ex-manager Bernd Bönte in an interview with “Sports Illustrated”: “I don’t want to think any further because I like this situation can’t judge from the outside. But as everyone knows, the two are no bullies.”
The two Klitschkos, who at times shared the world’s heavyweight titles, had never met in the ring. Both reported again and again that their mother Nadesha had forbidden them to do so. Now both want to fight, together on the same battlefield. It’s to be taken literally, none of those exaggerated, martial sports metaphors. “Every man is proud to be able to die for the future of his family,” said Vitali Klitschko recently in one of his speeches to his compatriots and the world.
“This war against my country is not just the result of one man’s insanity, it is also the result of years of weakness in Western democracies. This insanity must be stopped now by stepping up deterrence. Our governments must say things loud and clear.” , Wladimir Klitschko wrote in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” at the weekend. “If Putin really implements his plan for regime change in Kyiv, then democracies around the world must start thinking about regime change in Moscow now. Before it’s too late.”
Both Klitschko brothers are currently said to be in Kyiv together, protected by special forces, says Andreas von Thien. “As mayor, Vitali Klitschko is one of the first targets alongside President Selenskyj. He is one of the people who particularly stand for this war. A prominent face that I believe Putin would also like to destroy.” Around 400 mercenaries from the “Wagner Group” are to hunt down President Zelenskyy at the behest of the Kremlin, the British “Times” reported in the morning, citing a source close to the group’s leadership. In addition to the president and his government, Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko are said to be on a Russian death list.