One Sunday afternoon in mid-May, as the horse chestnuts flowered in candelabras along the Dnieper river, the Ukrainian Paralympian men’s sitting-volleyball team met for training in the city of Dnipro. They gathered in a cavernous sports hall built in the Soviet era, setting down their bags on benches, pulling off their prosthetic legs, pulling on their blue and yellow jerseys. 

Anatolii Andrusenko, about to turn 60, is the oldest member of the team. He lost his legs in the 1980s, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Zhenia Korinets, at 27 the youngest on the team, had a leg blown off a year before, while serving as a combat medic. He played Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” through a portable speaker and was in his usual high spirits. So, too, was Oleksii Kharlamov, a veteran and a die-hard football fan, who wore a big grin on his face: his team, Shakhtar Donetsk, had just won the Ukrainian championship. It was Andriy Pryshchepa’s 35th birthday. He and his younger brother both suffer from progressive polyneuropathy, which affects the nerves in the hands and feet. They played table tennis before taking up sitting volleyball. 

Not everyone was in good cheer. Maksym Petrenchuk had left his wife and toddler son in Kharkiv the day before, just as the Russians began a renewed attack across the border. “Yes, I’m worried,” he said, but his family were prepared to evacuate if necessary.