“I use anti-tank mines for weightlifting”: meet Ukraine’s Paralympians

By Wendell Steavenson with Anastasiia Parafeniuk

One Sunday afternoon in mid-May, as the horse chestnuts flowered in candelabras along the Dnieper river, the Ukrainian Paralympian men’s sitting-volleyball team met for training in the city of Dnipro. They gathered in a cavernous sports hall built in the Soviet era, setting down their bags on benches, pulling off their prosthetic legs, pulling on their blue and yellow jerseys.