Ukrainians see US fans as team mates at World Championships

EUGENE, Ore. : On his first day at the World Athletics Championships, the acting president of Ukraine’s track and field federation Yevhen Pronin said he experienced something remarkable: a group of Americans trying to buy him lunch.

As U.S. relations with Moscow fray to their worst point in decades over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian athletes and officials say they feel at home in Eugene, Oregon, where they can spot their flag around the quiet college town.

"Six or five persons come to us and ask ‘Can we pay for your lunch?’ I don’t understand what’s happened," Pronin told reporters on Wednesday. "Somebody tells me, it’s support, it’s normal."

Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, calling it a "special military operation" to rid Ukraine of fascists, an assertion the Ukrainian government and its Western allies said was a baseless pretext for an unprovoked war.

While cheers of "USA!" ricocheted through Hayward Field as the U.S. men swept the 100 metres podium, another sentiment is well represented among the host crowd: support for Ukraine.

“You can see that (there are) a lot of Ukrainian flags in the windows in Eugene but it’s not Ukrainians,” said Pronin, who is a soldier in the Ukrainian army and spent four months on the front lines before travelling to the World Championships.

Russian and Belarusian athletes are absent from the biennial event, the first held on U.S. soil, after World Athletics in March banned them for the foreseeable future.

Pronin, who plans to return to the front line for three weeks before travelling to the European Championships, said this is the smallest delegation the country has ever sent, with just 22 athletes.

High jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh, who collected her second straight silver in