What most who pass by — or sit down to play — don’t seem to realize that Yezhova hasn’t lost a single game in the 10 days she’s been here. If she didn’t raise money for charity, she would be accused of being a con artist, as the 10-year-old is actually the world champion for her age in checkers, also known as checkers, after winning the title last summer.
“Valeria asked me how she could help the Ukrainian army,” said Yezhova’s mother Liubov, who stands next to Victor Kovalenko, the man who has been coaching Yezhova in drafts since she was seven. “I asked her what she is best at, she replied that she is good at checkers. That’s how this idea was born.”
“Good at checkers” means going out with her street opponents in minutes, without hesitation as she mercilessly clears black pieces from the board while her white pieces advance. The defeated challengers – children, women and men of all ages – let themselves fall into the box as much as they want and increasingly ask Yezhova for a photo thanks to her growing national fame.
‘Already a legend’
After spending more than a week outside the mall, Yezhova had raised the equivalent of $700. She decided to donate the money to a foundation run by the famous activist Serhiy Prytula, which has raised money to buy humanitarian aid and equipment for the Ukrainian army. An online video shows Prytula choking when Yezhova presents him with the stacks of bills.
The moment quickly spread on the Internet, and soon people wrote on Yezhova’s mother’s Facebook page, asking where they would be so they could play the young phenomenon.
“Valeria is already a legend here,” said Dmitro Penzev, after losing his game. His wife had seen Yezhova at the mall and called Penzev, who came rushing in from work. “You’d rather lose to her, she’s doing a great job for the Ukrainian military. She’s probably touched all of Ukraine.”
Word has already reached the front line; a woman who saw Yezhova showed her a photo of her husband’s unit and thanked Yezhova for what she does for them.
“It was a strange feeling,” Yezhova said. “I think I was grateful to the military for protecting us and despite the fact that I do a lot less than they do, they want to thank me.”
As Yezhova played, a store security guard came out to say that air-raid sirens were going off elsewhere in the city and that they were temporarily closing the doors for safety.
“Of course I would like to live a normal life, but it is difficult during the war,” she said. “This is an unpleasant feeling, there are a lot of negative emotions.”
Yezhova’s family spent the first week of the war in a school basement while Russian troops occupy a neighborhood outside Kiev where her grandparents live. They fled to the western city of Lviv as fighting intensified, but eventually returned to the capital.
‘Great example’
She is both European and World Champion for her age group, the youth under 10. She will return to Turkey next month for the European Youth Championship, but this time she doesn’t expect to do as well as she will face players up to 13 years old.
On this 10th day sitting at her folding table, Yezhova takes a moment to count the money after just over an hour and a half of play. It’s almost $150, a record amount, which will soon go to the Serhiy Prytula Foundation.
But before she goes to the day, 18-year-old Mykola asks Sorokin for a game. They play two, each as quietly as any other that day.
“These children are a good example of how we can help each other, a good example that Russia cannot beat us,” he said after his loss. Running into Yezhova was a “dream come true,” he adds, and in terms of skill, “I am the ground and she is the sky.”