The conflict between Ukraine and Russia is at an all-time high at press time with several combat sports athletes joining in the fight to protect Ukraine from the Russian invasion.
Over the weekend, current Bellator champion, Yaroslav Amosov, has announced he will remain in Ukraine and fight for his country instead of fighting Michael Venom Page in May.
“Probably, many will think that I ran away, I’m hiding or something like that, but this is not so,” Amosov said on Instagram. “I took my family to the safe zone. Now I have returned and will defend this country as best I can, with what I can. I love this country, our own. Russia came to our house and started a war here, many people are dying – innocents, women and children. We have to defend this country, and we succeed, friends. And we will succeed because the truth is behind us.”
He joins fellow athletes in the fight.
Former boxing champion and current mayor of Kiev, the city most impacted by the siege, also joined in the fight. Vitali Klitschko and his brother Wladimir are on the front lines of the conflict.
“I don’t have another choice, I have to do that. I’ll be fighting,” Klitschko said when the invasion first happened.
ESPN’s No. 8 pound-for-pound boxer Vasiliy Lomachenko also joined his country by taking up arms against Russia.
“The Belgorod-Dnestrovsky Territorial Defense Battalion has been formed and armed. In the territorial defense, boxer Vasily Lomachenko informed the mayor Vitaly Grazhdan,” his statement reads.
Bellator champion, boxing champions fighting for Ukraine against Russia