"Putin is ill." More than eight years ago, Vitali Klitschko caused a stir with this contemptuous assessment of the Kremlin dictator.

“Putin has actually achieved what I never thought possible: that someone can turn our two brother peoples against each other.

I know what I'm talking about.

My mother is Russian.

Putin wants to build a new Soviet Union and for this huge empire he needs Ukraine.”

Vitali Klitschko is now terribly confirmed.

The interview took place in December 2014 in the mayor's office in the town hall on Kiev's magnificent Kreshchatyk Boulevard.

The reason was the depressing balance of a threatening year for Ukraine after the Maidan revolution, annexation of Crimea, war in Donbass against the separatists of the so-called "people's republics" Donetsk and Luhansk in the east of the second largest country in Europe.

The former world boxing champion was elected mayor of the Ukrainian capital on May 25, 2014.

The “champion emeritus” had withdrawn his announced candidacy for the office of president in favor of Petro Poroshenko and supported the former foreign and economics minister.

“We are a team with the same goals and vision.

Ukraine should become a democratic European country.

With my candidacy announced before the revolution, I wanted to end Yanukovych's dictatorship," Vitali Klitschko said at the time.

The "Euromaidan" uprising had driven Putin's vassal and kleptocratic President Viktor Yanukovych to flee to Russia.

Looking back, Vitali Klitschko promised at the end of this fateful year: "Now I will focus all my energy on making Kyiv a thriving city." Since February 24, 2022, the 2.8 million metropolis on the Dnieper has been threatened with destruction.

Daily video messages to the population

The mayor is currently addressing the population in daily video messages, describing the war situation in the city, imposing measures such as night-time curfews, calling for discipline, avoiding streets and visiting protective facilities such as metro stations.

Vitali Klitschko announces perseverance slogans.

“Dear friends, dear Kievans.

We are prepared to defend Kyiv.

Keep calm and only follow official information.

Kyiv will resist and persevere.

Our strength is the fighting spirit.

you are heroes

Nobody can break our strength.

Glory to Ukraine!”

Vitali and his brother Wladimir Klitschko embody the brother peoples par excellence.

The father Wladimir Rodionowitsch Klitschko, born in the Oblast (administrative district) of Kyiv, was a colonel in the Soviet Air Force and was stationed in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, among other places.

In the two Soviet republics, the Russian teacher Nadezhda Uljanowa Klitschko gave birth to the two boys, Vitali on July 19, 1971, Wladimir on March 25, 1976. After Ukraine's independence, father Klitschko became a major general.

He died in the summer of 2011 at the age of 64 from lymph node cancer, presumably the late result of his service in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.

Vitali Klitschko only learned his father's language at the age of 14.

At an election rally in June 2012 in Cherkassy town square, where it was very important that he spoke Ukrainian, a woman among the 3,000 listeners and spectators shouted: “Vitali, aren't you Russian?

I miss the Ukrainian melody in you.” Sometimes he had problems expressing himself perfectly in Ukrainian.