Former world heavyweight boxing champion on his exasperation with the IOC, the spirit of ‘badass’ Ukrainians and why he wants Anthony Joshua to beat Tyson Fury
Rick Broadbent
September 25, 2026
The Times
The hardest winter will soon come to Ukraine and the war is still wreaking death, destruction and detritus. More talks on a diplomatic solution are coming too, but the burning backdrop is Russia’s threat to intensify strikes on Kyiv after drones hit Moscow. Sport may seem trivial in this bleak landscape, but it is a totem as well as a release, and Wladimir Klitschko is seething with frustration.
The boxer turned 50 this year. He won multiple heavyweight titles and an Olympic gold medal, and was unbeaten for more than a decade before ending his career with 54 knockouts. That record and a dignified method created enduring status, and since Russia’s invasion he has been working for the war effort as an unofficial ambassador.
While Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury prolong the tittle-tattle of sepia careers, Klitschko has been fighting for his country. Four years ago he set up WeAreAllUkrainians, a non-profit organisation to provide emergency relief and long-term projects such as one offering psychological support to 500 women and girls. The organisation also trains teachers to spot trauma. The Klitschko Foundation, which has reached three million children over the decades, pivoted after the invasion and has since provided 500 tonnes of assistance.
His brother, fellow world champion Vitali, is the mayor of Kyiv. Two weeks into the war, they had raised $100million (about £75million) from fundraising in Germany. Meanwhile, more than 400 Russian mercenaries were in Kyiv hunting the brothers who were on the Kremlin’s 24-name assassination list.
It is hard to think of a more remarkable sporting afterlife. “War is complicated with a lot of different layers,” says the younger Klitschko, who was born in Kazakhstan when it was part of the former Soviet Union. Their Ukrainian father was a major general in the Soviet air force and only when Vitali went to the United States as an 18-year-old did the siblings begin to understand the power of propaganda. “In the past five years we were mostly attacked by kamikaze drones, Shaheds or other rockets during the night,” he says as he reflects on the changes since the invasion. “For around a month it’s been day and night. “The sirens are going off all the time. You hear the explosions, the attacks. There’s so much flying above our heads. Some of it is getting destroyed by our air defence but the rest hits its target, and when you walk down the street the stuff that’s been destroyed is literally falling on you. It’s not just the war on the front line.” He talks of the damage to food and emergency supplies. “It’s just reckless war with a horrifying face.”
On numerous occasions during our discussion, Klitschko refers to the “so-called free world”. It is a refrain that shows his anger at any wavering in support and also his belief that Ukraine could be the tip of an iceberg. Inevitably, Vladimir Putin has just secured a wartime election victory. The president has also said it is “a secret” when asked if Russia might strike military bases in the UK.
All of this feeds Klitschko’s incredulity at the provisional decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in July to reinstate Russia. Ukraine has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but the Russian flag could be flying again over Los Angeles in 2028.
In January a skeleton racer, Vladyslav Heraskevych, was disqualified from the Winter Olympics for wearing a helmet carrying images of Ukrainian athletes killed in the war.
Klitschko cannot contain his exasperation. “Every single loosening of sanctions, whether economic or in sports, strengthens our common enemy,” he says. “With all the horror that Putin’s Russia brought into Ukraine, and with that, the complications of energy prices, people in the free world are suffering and complaining. “Those complaints are being used by some political parties, as you see in Germany for example, to say it’s all the fault of the war in Ukraine. Basically ‘give up Ukraine and life is going to get better’. Wrong. Life is going to get worse.
“With the IOC, the loosening of any sanction is playing into the hands of Putin’s Russia. You cannot let Russian and Belarusian athletes compete as gymnasts, for example, when our gymnasts are losing lives and limbs. Letting the aggressor be part of international events like the Olympic Games or world championships is spitting in Ukrainian faces. Think about the athletes, the fallen ones, the injured ones, the handicapped ones — it’s just not human.
“Everything the new [IOC] president [Kirsty Coventry] is doing in regards to letting Belarusian and Russian athletes compete is beyond wrong. They need to understand how horrifying the consequences could be for all of us without exceptions. It’s not just stolen children, it’s not just the suffering of Ukrainians, it’s also Mother Nature and nuclear power plants. We’re all going to be affected.”
The mention of nuclear plants is personal. Klitschko’s father, Vladimir, was one of the “liquidators” sent to Chernobyl to help with the containment after the 1986 disaster; he died of cancer in 2011.
The stolen children are another aspect of war that close to Klitschko’s heart. A Yale University study this month estimated that more than 35,000 Ukrainian children have been forcibly “transferred” to Russia from occupied areas. “If you give up on Ukraine we’re not going to be the last country, but the first,” he says. “We speak about Ukrainian stolen children. Tomorrow we can speak about German stolen children, Polish children, British children. “I’ve seen those children that have been in the occupied territories, captured by the Russians, that we managed to get back. I heard those stories and I’ve seen those eyes. The scars on their faces are physical so it’s not that important, but the other scars will remain, the inner scars, the mental scars from the last moment when they saw their parents, brothers and sisters captured.”
Klitschko is grieving when we speak. His former partner Hayden Panettiere died last month. He split from the American actress, famous for the series Heroes and Nashville, in 2018 but they remained on friendly terms and Klitschko took custody of their daughter, Kaya, due to Panettiere’s addiction issues. After her death at only 36, Klitschko hailed her “immense talent” in the face of “darker sides of a very demanding industry”. He is becoming too familiar with daily tragedy but says he is empowered by the enduring spirit of Ukrainians. In other countries the deluge of shocking news stories becomes a drip-feed that can slowly inure watchers to the worst of war, but Klitschko says he sees enough from the young people his charities work with to provide optimism.
“It’s unbelievable how strong and educated the new generation that grew up during the war are,” he says. “We try to teach them to control their mind and with that they can take control of their lives.” Part of this involves his FACE method, which stems from his boxing work with old trainer Emanuel Steward: focus, agility, co-ordination, endurance.
Klitschko draws a parallel with Hitler and the invasion of Poland in 1939, but says Ukraine will not give in. “Don’t underestimate Ukraine. We’re badass. We’re committed to defending ourselves. We’re adapting. They said it would be three days but we chose to resist and fight, following Darwin’s theory on survival. So we cry, we bury our friends and family, but we celebrate birthdays and weddings.”
The Klitschkos are celebrated in Ukraine. Both have PhDs in sports science, coining the monikers Dr Steelhammer (Wladimir) and Dr Ironfist (Vitali). The mayoral office invites criticism, but the brothers boosted national pride via sport, and chose to stay in Ukraine rather than use their wealth to escape. Wladimir says it was an easy choice and that he is not in Kyiv merely to look good. “It’s about looking in the mirror,” he explains.
Friends told him to leave. He was born outside Ukraine and spent most of his life beyond its borders, gaining international acclaim by fighting largely in Germany and the United States. There was one title fight in Moscow in 2013, when he beat Russia’s Alexander Povetkin, and he was past his best when he bowed out with defeats by Fury in Düsseldorf and, then, aged 41, to Joshua at Wembley in 2017. “I think at some point, when you’re really going deep and facing the biggest threats of your life, you understand what’s important,” he says. “It’s not the money in your account, not the titles that you have collected. It’s all about your own morals.”
Faced with visceral realities, sporting analogies look painfully trite, but Klitschko says some are valid. “In boxing you say ‘bully the bully,’ ” he says. “Putin’s Russia is the bully.” Bullying now means sanctions and he concedes economics will be the concluding factor. “The so-called free world signed the paperwork to give us guarantees when we gave up our nukes. We got screwed big time. Now some of the free-world leaders are saying we have to pay for the stuff we gave up to protect ourselves. It’s an example of international law being very questionable. We need to protect the skies above our heads and with that the so-called free world is hesitating.”
It is rare for a leading sporting figure to be so immersed in the real lives of his compatriots. There is no obsession with brands or dollars or egos here, but Klitschko says part of surviving involves enjoying ordinary things in extraordinarily dark times. Hence he is interested in the prospect of Joshua meeting Fury. Both will be younger than he was when he fought them, even if it is far too late to provide definitive proof of anything.
“I hope Joshua is going to beat Fury because otherwise I’m going to come out of retirement,” he says. “Look, if they want it, how could you stop it? I fought with both of them and I kept contact with Anthony, so we became friends. He was in my training camp and was my sparring partner, and he has also helped the Klitschko Foundation after our fight.
“I have a bond with him even though the years have passed. If they fight I think they’re both strong and they’re both vulnerable. I would pick Anthony Joshua [to win]. I just hope he’s going to make it.”
This year Joshua visited Kyiv and was shown around by Oleksandr Usyk, the third of the trio of great Ukrainian heavyweight champions. “He was in the war zone personally,” Klitschko says. “He called me while he was here, checking on me. He’s a good man.”
After Klitschko politely offers thanks for the interest and adds that the world should thank Ukraine for “holding the big Russian bear”, he says something that shows just what is on the line. “The more Russians try to conquer us the more teeth we will show. They can kill and murder, but they can’t stop life.”
Rick Broadbent writes on a range of sports for The Times. He has worked at the Olympic Games, football and rugby world cups and all golf majors. The only Times journalist to interview the mute wrestler Kendo Nagasaki, he has been nominated as SJA feature writer of the year and has been shortlisted three times for the William Hill book prize.