‘There are no parallels with sport and war’: meet Zhan Beleniuk, the Olympic gold medal winner in Kyiv

“Usually when you lose a fight, there’s another day,” whispers Zhan Beleniuk, Ukraine’s sole gold medallist at the Tokyo 2020 Games and its first black member of parliament, as he awaits the Russian offensive on Kyiv. “But here you can die at any moment. And it’s not just your own life. It’s the lives of your family. It’s the future of your country. These are the highest stakes ever.”

Seven months ago, the 31-year-old celebrated his Olympic victory in the 87kg Greco-Roman wrestling by performing a traditional Hopak dance and announcing to the world that his all dreams had come true. Now, he tells the Guardian, he feels stuck “in a nightmare that is impossible to believe”.

“It’s really hard to describe the level of terror in Ukraine,” Beleniuk says. “You probably have to be here to understand the extent of it. There are so many stories. So many tragedies.”

On Beleniuk’s desk there are three pistols, and a grenade for good measure. The best weapons, he points out, are needed on the front. But if a Russian hit squad comes for him – he and other MPs are said to be on a kill list – he will be as ready as he can be. “I don’t have any military experience but I have to be prepared,” he says.

For now, though, he spends his time helping to fix problems in his area along with liaising with soldiers and volunteers. But, he admits, it is impossible to ignore the catastrophe going on in cities like Mariupol, where tens of thousands of people are confined to freezing basements with no power, basic sanitation and little food or water, as their city is turned to rubble.

How, he asks, can Europe watch this happen in 2022? “One of the biggest problems we face is that Russian troops are blocking humanitarian corridors in many places so