{"id":765658,"date":"2026-06-28T12:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T12:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/765658\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T12:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T12:04:14","slug":"vitali-klitschko-kyiv-mayor-vows-ukraine-will-not-give-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/765658\/","title":{"rendered":"Vitali Klitschko: Kyiv mayor vows Ukraine will not give up"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Gdansk: Vitali Klitschko knocked his opponents to the canvas as a world heavyweight champion. Now the former boxer, who has been the mayor of Kyiv for more than a decade, is adamant that Ukraine will stop Russia after four years of full-scale invasion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no other way,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\"KyivKyiv Mayor Vitali\u00a0Klitschko visits the site of a Russian air strike on the city in May.Bloomberg<\/p>\n

Klitschko, one of Ukraine\u2019s most powerful political figures, says the country will bring the Russian onslaught to a halt despite the nightly bombardments on civilian targets.<\/p>\n

As the wartime leader of the nation\u2019s capital, he is responsible for the emergency response to each attack and the essential services that support about 3 million people.<\/p>\n

And his approach to defending his city is not too different from his style in the ring, where he was known as Dr Ironfist when he dominated the heavyweight division in the early to mid-2000s with his brother and fellow champion, Wladimir. <\/p>\n

But he admits the losses are devastating and says the need for international support is just as great as it was when Russian President Vladimir Putin thought he could seize control of Kyiv in a matter of days in February 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"KlitschkoKlitschko fighting Samuel Peter of Nigeria in 2008.Bongarts<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re losing our infrastructure, and most importantly, we\u2019re losing our people, our children,\u201d Klitschko tells this masthead.<\/p>\n

\u201cHundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children have been stolen by Russia<\/a>. So the numbers are horrifying, the cases are horrifying, and the stories, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince 2022, in the full-scale war in Ukraine, Russia is trying to dominate, trying to basically erase the history of the country and its people and rewrite the history.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s not going to happen. It is not happening. We\u2019re resilient, we\u2019re fighting back, and we\u2019re not going to give up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PeoplePeople buy food at an improvised outdoor market in Kyiv this month, amid cars and building damaged by Russian attacks.AP <\/p>\n

His comments highlight the outrage in Ukraine at the removal of children from occupied parts of the country and their transportation to Russia, where they have been taught Putin\u2019s view of history: that Ukraine is not a separate country and merely land belonging to Russia.<\/p>\n

The United Nations has verified the deportation or transfer of at least 1200 children<\/a> from five regions in Ukraine. Other estimates put the number at more than 20,000. The UN\u2019s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine said the Russian policy was a violation of international law.<\/p>\n

Klitschko and his brother, having prospered from their boxing careers, are now defined by their defence of Ukraine, a story told in a documentary \u2013 Klitschko: More Than A Fight \u2013 released two years ago.<\/p>\n

Klitschko leads a foundation that has worked with international donors such as billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York. He has flown to world capitals to seek more civil and military support for Ukraine, and he has vowed to fight Russians if needed \u2013 even though on the fortune he made from boxing he could retire to a safe and comfortable hideaway.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This makes him a major political figure who can cause trouble for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. When Kyiv comes under attack and its citizens feel they need more help, Klitschko will criticise the president and do what it takes to get more support.<\/p>\n

Some view him as a future president, given his national (and international) profile and his long time in politics. He became the mayor of Kyiv in 2014, one year after retiring from boxing, and seems to have an iron hold on the post. He was mentioned as a contender for the presidency in the lead-up to the national election in 2014, before deciding not to run.<\/p>\n

In a rare interview with an Australian media outlet, in Poland on the sidelines of the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Gdansk, the Kyiv mayor thanks Australia for its support for Ukraine and says the war will have to continue until Putin is stopped.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will defend our right to live, we will defend our land, we will defend our right to live in the democratic, prosperous Ukraine,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s going to happen. There is no other way.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Is there anything Kyiv needs most urgently from outside Ukraine? The past four years have shown that no single kind of help is most important, he says, other than the effort to end the fighting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only one thing that we need is to stop this war \u2013 that\u2019s the only thing,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI understand that we have to bully the bully, and in this case, Putin\u2019s Russia is the bully, and we need support.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need military support, we need financial support, we need humanitarian support, we need to get our children back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"VitaliVitali Klitschko became mayor of Kyiv in 2014, a year after he retired from boxing.Bloomberg<\/p>\n

He notes that Putin was not declared a war criminal for destroying city buildings and killing civilians, but for stealing Ukrainian children<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo this war crime must be stopped. The war must be stopped. And Australians can do a lot. Thank you for your help and support you\u2019ve been providing, but as I said, how much is enough?<\/p>\n

Related Article\"AGE\/SMH<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s never enough [when] these horrifying events, as I described just right now, are still happening.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we were here, while we talk about it, the war\u2019s still going: daily bombardments, destruction. Obviously, the war takes the lives of our children, adults, our mothers, fathers, brothers of our civilians, and that must be stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what\u2019s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"DavidDavid Crowe<\/a> is Europe correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-765658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}