When Russia started invading Ukraine in February, Viktor Petrenko, one of Ukraine’s most visible Olympic champions, posted “NO WAR” on his Instagram account. Days later, Petrenko’s daughter said her father was stranded in Ukraine’s capital Kiev, where he sought shelter after returning from a commemoration of his 1992 Olympic figure skating title in his hometown of Odessa.
Petrenko appeared to be one of many Ukrainian athletes who would defiantly serve as wartime ambassadors for their beleaguered nation. But since then, his status as a champion in his native country has deteriorated.
In June, Petrenko announced his intention to leave the Ukrainian Figure Skating Federation. A day later, he was provisionally suspended, a federation official said. And in July, Petrenko was formally ousted and fired from his position as vice president after participating in an ice show in Sochi, Russia.
On Monday, the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Zelensky had stripped Petrenko of a monthly stipend given to elite athletes and other Ukrainians of great achievements, citing Petrenko’s achievements in Russia.
The ice show was hosted by Tatiana Navka, a 2006 Olympic ice dancing champion, who is the wife of Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov. In March, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Peskov and Navka for their ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, saying Navka had a real estate empire worth more than $10 million.
Another skater on the show, dubbed “The Scarlet Flower,” is Kamila Valieva, the Russian teen whose positive test for a banned substance was made public at the Beijing Olympics in February and who messed up her last Olympics routine under the weight of international strict supervision. The show is slated to continue through September, although it’s not clear if Petrenko is still performing in it.
In January, before the war started, Petrenko posted on Instagram that he was performing in St. Petersburg, Russia. But the Ukrainian Skating Federation said it was “outraged” at Petrenko’s skating in Russia after the invasion.
“The former athlete made his shameful decision despite the bloody large-scale war Russia is waging,” the federation said in a statement, according to a translation. The deaths of thousands of Ukrainians, the statement said, “didn’t become an obstacle for Viktor Petrenko to step out on the ice” in Russia “and join the same team with the supporters of this terrible war.”
The Olympic Committee of Ukraine also denounced Petrenko’s behavior, saying it was “unacceptable” to act “on the territory of the aggressor country, which is waging a brutal war against Ukraine”.
Petrenko, 53, did not respond to a request for comment Monday. His daughter Victoria, who lives in New York, said she was at work and unable to speak to a reporter.
Galina Zmievskaya, who coached Petrenko to his gold medal and now teaches skating in Hackensack, NJ, also did not respond to a request for comment.
Anastasiya Makarova, the general secretary of the Ukrainian Figure Skating Association, said in a WhatsApp message on Monday that on June 21, before going ice skating in Russia, Petrenko wrote a letter to officials saying he wanted to leave the federation.
Petrenko explained in the letter that he spent most of his time outside Ukraine while conducting his professional skating activities, Makarova said. Petrenko spends much of his time coaching and appearing in ice shows across Europe. Skating, like the rest of life in Ukraine, has been disrupted by the war.
He was provisionally expelled from the federation a day later and formally ousted by the federation’s council on July 9, Makarova said. “Unfortunately, I don’t know why he joined the show” in Russia, Makarova said.
Petrenko won a bronze medal in his battle for the Soviet Union at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, and finished third in the so-called Battle of the Brians, won by Brian Boitano of the United States over Brian Orser of Canada.
Four years later, Petrenko won gold at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. Just two months earlier, the Soviet Union had been dissolved. Petrenko did not compete for Ukraine during that tumultuous period, but for what was called the Unified Team in Albertville, made up of athletes from former Soviet republics.
In 1994, when the Winter and Summer Games were held in different years, Petrenko finished fourth at the Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, this time skating for the blue-and-yellow flag of his native Ukraine.
However, in the early 1990s, he joined an exodus of more than 100 skaters and coaches from the former Soviet Union who came to the United States to pursue their careers during a period of economic chaos in Russia when money for skating became scarce. and some ice rinks were turned into shopping malls and car dealerships. Eventually, Petrenko returned to Europe to coach and skate in ice shows.
In the small, close-knit world of elite figure skating, at least one prominent Russian coach, Tatiana Tarasova, came to Petrenko’s defense for the performance in Sochi. She told Tass, the Russian news agency, that Petrenko was “one of the best people I know” and that “it’s ugly that he’s forbidden” to do his job.