Up-and-coming Ukrainian star Yaroslava Mahochich, 20, said on Wednesday that “Russian killers among us” have no place in athletics ahead of the 18th World Championships in Eugene, USA.

Mahochic, who won silver at the 2019 Doha World Championships and bronze at last year’s Tokyo Olympics, was not only a fierce rival to Russia’s Maria Lasitskene, world champion in the last three events and the Olympic Games in the Japanese capital, but also her friend in the elite world of competition. in high jumps.

But the Ukrainian emphasized that everything changed due to the Russian invasion of her country, and she did not sympathize with Lasitskene’s absence from the World Cup due to the sanctions of the International Federation, saying that “Russian killers have no place among us. “

Mahocic gained worldwide fame when she won the gold medal at the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade last March.

At the time, she had to flee by car from Dnipro, her hometown in eastern Ukraine, to the Serbian capital of Belgrade on a three-day journey in “full panic” through Moldova.

“Three days by car, it was the longest three days for me,” she told reporters on Wednesday in Eugene.

Her amazing performance in Belgrade was enough for BIF President Sebastian Coe to present her with a handwritten letter signed “with gratitude and appreciation” at the presentation of her gold medal.

Mahuchic dominates the European Indoor High Jump Championships but struggled to win an Olympic bronze in Tokyo last summer and a silver at the 2019 World Outdoor Championships in Doha against archrival Lasickene.

Despite being a world and Olympic champion, Lasitskene is banned from participating in the world championships in Yevgeniya along with her compatriots and Belarus due to the invasion of Ukraine, against which the Russians protested at the International Olympic Committee.

Following the invasion of Ukraine in February last year, the International Olympic Committee recommended that Russian and Belarusian athletes be banned from participating, and most international federations complied with that request.

Lasickienė accused the president of the German International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, of fomenting a “new war” by recommending that Russian athletes be banned from international competitions.

“In the high jump, my main rivals are the Ukrainians,” she said. “I don’t know how to look them in the eye and what to say to them. They and their families are experiencing something that no person should experience.”

But this feeling did not suit Mahosheikh. Speaking of the day Russia invaded Ukraine, she said: “Before (February 24) we had a good relationship, we talked. But that day changed everything, because she (Lasitskene) did not write anything to our athletes.”

“But then she wrote to Thomas Bach to compete because they are Russians, and ours are dying because they are Ukrainians,” she added.

“I don’t want to see killers on the track because they killed so many athletes in this war,” she said.

Regarding her Eugene ambitions, Mahutchik insisted that the competition gave her “more incentive to excel”.

“Therefore, we hope that this is good news for the Ukrainian people. It’s hard mentally, but I think we will win and get back to our lives and we will always remember this period of time,” she said.