Usik to couch patriots: My Church teaches me to love and create

Boxer Alexander Usik. Photo: jetsetter.ua

On May 11, 2020, the famous Ukrainian boxer Alexander Usik published a video message in which he answered fighter Bogdan Hrytsay and other opponents who condemned him for taking part in the film “Hello, Brother, Christ is Risen!”. The video is posted on the boxer's YouTube channel.

"Dear friends. All those who want to challenge me to battle. There are a very large number of you, and I can’t answer everyone and box with everyone ... If I fought with everyone - my hands would be rubbed sore down my elbow ... But another guy appeared, he dared to record a video – respect. But it’s not for this that I’ve got up for many years early in the morning, has been malnourished, underfed, had difficulties. I box and live by the rules. If you want to show yourself, you are welcome to the ring,” says the boxer.

He explains: “You insult and condemn me for the film. The film shows how God changed my life. As well as the lives of the participants who starred in this film. I can act in whatever films and anywhere. We are a democratic power, we are striving for a democratic society.”

The boxer believes that those who throw unjustified accusations against Usik himself and his colleagues “take out of the context” the videos that they record in order to gain popularity, “more subscribers, views” and their rhetoric divides the country and its people.

“For me, the whole territory of Ukraine is the land where Ukrainians live,” said the boxer. “For me, there are no Bandera followers, Muscovites, or anyone else. For me, everyone is Ukrainian. And it doesn’t matter where he lives - in Lviv, Crimea, Donetsk, Odessa ... My country is Ukraine. If I wanted to leave somewhere, then I would have done it a long time ago. I do not want to go anywhere, and you will not expel me from here. Because it is my country. Do not separate people. TV channels, do not take out of the context, do not divide the Ukrainian people. We are Ukrainians. We are not Little Russians, we are not separatists.”

My Church teaches me to love, not to take away anything, but to love, to create and build. <...> Dividing the people, we will not come to anything good,” concluded Alexander Usik.

At the end of the video message, the boxer wishes everyone to do real work and “good and love”.

As reported earlier, the well-known boxers Alexander Usik and Vasily Lomachenko were entered into the “Mirotvorets” database as “opponents of the independence of Ukrainian Orthodoxy from the Russia-controlled ROC”.

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