- May 17, 2013
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Still, Klitschko says, “I can’t hate Russians.” I ask him how, after all they’ve done. “My mother’s Russian. I can’t hate my mom. Half of my body is Russian blood. My first language is Russian. And a lot of people here in Ukraine are Russians, fighting for Ukraine.” Even so, there’s no confusion about his loyalty. When he was young, Klitschko served in Ukraine’s military, and his father was a Ukrainian general in the Soviet Union’s military who taught him the “biggest privilege” is to “die for your country.”
Klitschko is reluctant to guess what the second month of war would bring to Kyiv, but he lets himself make one prediction: Russian soldiers will never take the city. “I tell you not as an official, but as a citizen: Better that we die than we give up.”
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko where a shell hit a residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine, March 18, 2022.Thomas Peter/Reuters
Klitschko is reluctant to guess what the second month of war would bring to Kyiv, but he lets himself make one prediction: Russian soldiers will never take the city. “I tell you not as an official, but as a citizen: Better that we die than we give up.”
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko where a shell hit a residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine, March 18, 2022.Thomas Peter/Reuters