Like Volodymyr Zelensky and their countrymen, Kyiv mayor Vitali and his brother Wladimir refuse to be bullied as they defend their country
It was the kind of defiant, no-nonsense remark we’ve come to expect from Ukrainian leaders in this war, but it still felt extraordinary. In Kyiv on Wednesday morning, as the sun rose on a battered and eerily quiet city, its mayor pulled a flak vest over his down jacket and headed out to survey the damage from another ballistic slugfest overnight.
Vitali Klitschko was heavily guarded, of course, but at 6ft 7ins and 18 stone, with a 203cm reach and a world heavyweight boxing record of 45 wins and 41 knockouts from 47 fights, he is more than capable of handling himself.
For a decade, Vitali and his lookalike younger brother, Wladimir, who has been by his side throughout the war, dominated heavyweight boxing. In a sport filled with large, tough men, they were known for being especially large, and especially tough.
On Wednesday, as he picked a path through the destruction, a reporter asked Vitali about Vladimir Putin’s assertion that Russia was only bombing “military targets”. The mayor halted his walk.
“Bull—-,” he snapped. Then he composed himself, apologised, and gestured to the ruins of an apartment block. “Where is military target? This building is military target?”
A short clip of the moment, captioned with the words, “One of the all-time greatest interviews”, soon went viral, with more than 7.3 million views in 24 hours. With 12 seconds and a few words, this was the Ukrainian wartime spirit in excelsis: honest, exasperated and hard as nails.
Like Volodymyr Zelensky, and all their countrymen, the Klitschko brothers aren’t going to put up with being bullied. But then, they never have.
“Their courage in the last few weeks is exactly what you would expect,” says Sebastian Dehnhardt, a German filmmaker and friend of the brothers, who followed them for two years for a 2011 documentary, Klitschko.
Earlier this week, Wladimir, who has joined the reserve army, insisted they have no intention of leaving. “You can’t break our will. This is our home. We will fight,” he said. Dehnhardt believes it: “I can promise you the Klitschkos won’t run away, like cowards. They will stand there and bring it to an end.”
To understand what the Klitschkos mean to Ukraine, imagine if somebody with the fame and sporting legacy of David Beckham had the respect and gravitas of Sir David Attenborough, the physical bearing of a lifesize Action Man, and then double it, sprinkling some Churchillian resolve in for good measure.
Thanks to their boxing exploits alone, they have appeared on postage stamps, are mobbed by fans wherever they go, have had an asteroid (212723 Klitschko) named after them, and, with PhDs in sports science, possess excellent nicknames: Vitali is “Dr Ironfist”, Wladimir is “Dr Steelhammer.” Expect Emmanuel Macron to be brainstorming for a similar sobriquet as we speak.
Vitali, 50, is not a mere celebrity politician. Though he kept boxing until 2013, he initially ran for mayor of Kyiv in 2006, before forming his own political party, Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (the acronym translated to “Punch”) four years later. After considering a run for president – an ambition nobody believes has subsided – he became mayor in 2014.
“They have a very political heart – they fought for the Orange Revolution in 2004, they fought in the protests in 2013 and 2014,” Dehnhardt says. “Vitali had achieved everything in boxing, but he is very stubborn, and even in 2009 would talk about wanting to change things.”
Wladimir, 45, is less politically-minded, but can appear more outspoken due to being the more fluent English speaker, and more at home in front of a camera. Since retiring from boxing in 2017, he has done some acting, opened various businesses, and committed himself to dozens of humanitarian causes.
While Vitali married Natalia, a Ukrainian singer with whom he has three children, Wladimir has a daughter with his American former fiancée, the Nashville actress Hayden Panettiere.
Yet despite some differences, the Klitschkos come as a pair. “I always say they’re very ‘twinny’. They’re not twins, but behave like it. It’s an incredibly strong bond, so I’m not surprised they’re both there together,” Dehnhardt says. “They’re both overly protective of the other, in a way.”
As champion boxers, they always refused to fight one another, a decision that put the heavyweight division in an awkward, rictus state for several years when they held all four major titles, but they had promised their mother they would never entertain Klitschko vs Klitschko. “I wouldn’t do it, even for $1 billion,” Wladimir once said. “You can’t put a price on your mother’s heart.”
That mother is Nadezhda, a Russian who raised the boys with their father, Vladimir, a proud Soviet Air Force general. Military brats, the boys were born in the Caucasus, and moved relentlessly with their father’s various posts, living in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and the Czech Republic before Ukraine.
In 1986, when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, Vladimir had the task of co-ordinating the helicopters dropping sand directly into the reactor. His subsequent cancer was thought to have been caused by exposure at the site. Despite his sons paying for the world’s best treatments, he died, aged 64, in 2011.
“I always say they are Earthlings. They can live anywhere,” Dehnhardt says of the Klitschko brothers. They speak Ukrainian, Russian, German and English, and own properties in the US. “When you look at their biography, though, it’s all about this Ukraine-Russia tension.”
The boys attended tough Soviet training academies, essentially boarding schools designed to produce all-round excellent athletes and military officers. “They were weaned on Soviet military spirit. The discipline, the competition. Their playgrounds were military training camps – they are really products of the Soviet army.”
Photographs of the family in the early 1990s show two giants with their proud-as-punch parents. Whatever they fed them, it worked: not only tall and broad, they were preposterously athletic, able to pack on muscle, take a punch, hit hard and fight intelligently.
Some heavyweights are only able to get into fighting shape when required. In the Klitschkos’ case, trainers marvelled at how consistent they were. Even now, they look ready to come out of retirement without a training plan.
Moving to Hamburg in the mid-1990s saw the brothers emerge from the former Soviet Union and break up an era of transatlantic dominance in the heavyweight division. First came an Olympic gold for Wladimir at Atlanta 1996, then careers as professionals.
Once Lennox Lewis retired in 2004, they bagged all major world titles, initiating a period of supremacy which lasted a decade. Through that time, they were sporting gentlemen: never engaging in the theatrics of boxing, even when provoked.
In 2012, Britain’s Derek Chisora impetuously slapped Vitali at the weigh-in before a title bout, in an attempt to finally ruffle a Klitschko. As a melee erupted, Vitali simply stared back, and told him he’d pay for it in the ring. Despite being 40 and injured, he won the fight.
That manner – honest, moral and dignified – always endeared the Klitschkos to the people in Ukraine, a country previously devastated by corruption. When Vitali entered politics, and Wladimir stayed close by, it became an even greater strength.
As war rages, they know the motivating power of presentation as well as Zelensky, another celebrity-cum-politician. So they make every effort to be seen on the ground, in their fatigues and body armour, and addressing the West in direct English. They have said they are prepared to die for their country, and Dehnhardt doesn’t doubt that, no matter how high they are on Putin’s hit list.
“They will never ‘capture’ them, it’s a matter of life and death, I think. I hope somebody [evacuates] them with Zelensky, who is the real heavyweight champion, but it won’t happen. The fighting in Kyiv will determine the result of this, and the Klitschkos will stay,” he says.
There is a childhood story Nadezhda recalls in Dehnhardt’s film which just about sums them up. One day, a mother and son from the boys’ school turned up at the door of the family home. The mother explained that her son had a broken nose thanks to Vitali.
“He threw my hat in a puddle after I’d warned him not to,” Vitali explained. “When he did it again, I punched him.”
It has all led to this moment, Dehnhardt thinks. “One thing I remember Wladimir saying is, ‘It’s not about power, becoming a great boxer, because power is always killed by speed and anticipation.’ You see these tactics against Putin, don’t you?”