Paris Olympics 2024: Ukraine climber Jenya Kazbekova discusses competing while her country is at war

When Ukrainian climber Jenya Kazbekova was woken at 5am by the sounds of bombs falling outside her home in Kyiv, she barely had time to process that her life was about to change.

“It was one of the most horrifying experiences I’ve ever had in my life,” she said.

“I woke up, looked at my mum because we shared a bedroom and was like, what was that? What are those sounds? And then it happened again.

“We pulled out our phones and started looking on social media and there was news all over that it started – explosions all over Ukraine. I just remember trying to pack up my stuff and my hands would not stop shaking.”

Two years on, the 27-year-old sport climber is preparing to compete in the boulder and lead event at the Paris Olympics.

That is something she could not imagine when she and her family joined millions who fled Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.

“Everyone was leaving. Everyone was trying to escape. It was just a horrible time where you don’t really have food, you don’t really have anything and you’re not allowed to stop,” she told BBC Radio 5 Live.

Along with her sister and parents, Kazbekova drove for four days to reach Germany before having to wait for two days to cross the Polish border.

“You keep going – sometimes you’re in this five-kilometre line to the border and you move five metres every few minutes. You cannot sleep. You cannot properly take care of yourself,” she said.

“We arrived in Germany fully exhausted, and even though it was a really hard experience, we were still privileged enough to have the possibility to escape in the first place because so many people had to stay behind.”