A deadly Russian airstrike on Sumy has reportedly killed one of Ukraine’s most talented young sambo fighters - a combat sport loved by Vladimir Putin.
Artyom Priymenko, 16, was said to have been killed alongside his entire family when bombs hit residential homes in the battered city.
They were among 21 who died in the strike late on Monday, it has been reported.
The teenage champion’s father Vitaly, mother Ekaterina, paternal grandmother and two younger brothers named Egor and Kirill died with him, said his coach Evgeny Leonenko.
“This is a great sorrow for the family of sambo wrestlers, his relatives and for all of us.”
Sambo is a Russian martial art popular across the ex-USSR, originating in the 1920s when soldiers of the Red Army developed their own hand-to-hand combat technique.
“Artyom was a multiple winner of the Ukrainian Sambo Championships,” said Mr Leonenko.
“Last year he won a gold medal in Kherson in the 88 kg weight.
“He won a place in the Ukrainian national team for the World Cup in the Netherlands.
“He was very promising.”
A humanitarian corridor opened at 9am on Tuesday, allowing 5,000 to evacuate, say reports, but the deadly nighttime bombing that killed the teenage wrestler and his family came around 11 hours earlier.
As a child, Mr Putin was a keen sambo and judo wrestler - and the International Sambo Federation (FIAS) president Vasily Shestakov, 68, the Kremlin leader’s ex-coach, said he could have been a top-level competitor if he had not become a KGB spy.
“Sambo and judo may have lost a great athlete, but the country has found a great president,” he said once.
Mr Putin has vowed to make samba an Olympic sport.
Russia has claimed it is striking military targets but the toll of civilians rises by the day, prompting two million Ukrainians to flee abroad.
According to Mr Putin’s tightly controlled state media, the desperate population are instead “fleeing the terror organised by local nationalists”.
