The Kvit Kalyny veterans town in the Kyiv region has received modern sports equipment from the company Interatletika. It is the joint work of the Andrii Zasukha Charitable Foundation, the Kyiv Regional State Administration, the regional council and business.
The published photos show wood-coloured strength stations, a treadmill and dumbbells under the pines. According to Oleksiuk, this means even more opportunities for sport, rehabilitation and recovery for the veterans and their families.
Photo: Vasyl Oleksiuk / Facebook
Interatletika has been in the sports equipment market since 1993, and in 2010 it certified its outdoor exercise machines under the European safety standard EN16630. The company describes itself as the leader of the Ukrainian market.
But the machines are only the latest chapter of a story that features a decision made in 15 minutes, a French king, Olympic London, footballers with amputations and a Bucha native who scored against Rudakov.
15 minutes and nine months
Construction of the town began in autumn 2023, and 45 families received keys and documents on 25 August 2024, the day after Independence Day.
The regional administration said at the time that it took Andrii Zasukha just 15 minutes to decide to build, and nine months to make it happen. No budget money was spent on the project.
The money came from the Andrii Zasukha Charitable Foundation, the Svitanok agricultural firm and FC Kolos of Kovalivka. The town cost more than UAH 261 million, or roughly UAH 4.4 million per house once all the utilities, roads and shared spaces are counted.
Partner companies gave discounts on materials. It was the money saved, Oleksiuk explained, that made it possible to build 59 houses rather than 45, giving a home to 14 more families.
Photo: KyivVladaThe town in numbers
The first inclusive town in Ukraine for severely wounded veterans stands in the Vasylkiv area, among pines and next to a large lake. Here is how it looks in numbers.
- 59 houses instead of the planned 45
- nine months to complete
- zero hryvnias from the regional or state budget
- more than UAH 261 million was the cost of the project
- 75–80 sq m per house, plus a terrace of about 20 sq m
- 0.04–0.05 hectares of land by each home; the house and plot become the family’s property
- the first 2 homes were fitted for specific needs: a wheelchair and a prosthesis
- more than 50 families were already living here by the end of 2025
- about 15,000 service members, by Oleksiuk’s estimate in early 2025, need the same kind of support
Photo: Bucha Naikrashche Misto
Who lives here
Candidates were nominated by the command of units sponsored by the Kyiv region: the 72nd Mechanized Brigade, the 114th Territorial Defence Brigade, the 3rd Assault Brigade and the Defence Intelligence. The criteria are simple: a wound that rules out further service, a family and no home of their own.
Families of fallen Heroes also live here, and the veterans include Invictus Games competitors who keep training and competing. The town’s sports ground was specially adapted for that kind of training.
Renovation is paid for by the benefactors, and those who prefer to do it themselves receive a certificate for materials. The first two homes were fitted out for a soldier in a wheelchair and a veteran with a prosthesis, with the necessary lowered surfaces, bathrooms and kitchens.
Photo: Bucha Naikrashche Misto
The town draws its water from a borehole, gas is supplied centrally, and each house has its own boiler. Ramps lead down to the lake with its swans, and a bus bought by the benefactors takes children to kindergartens and schools.
There is an amphitheatre, barbecue areas, a playground and a shelter, and residents have already set up a homeowners’ association. The Ministry of Veterans Affairs adds that residents have the option of official employment.
In December 2025 keys to three more houses went to veterans of the National Guard’s Omega special unit. Their families were due to move in fully in spring 2026.
Photo: Kyiv Regional State AdministrationFrom Louis XIV to Stoke Mandeville
The idea of a separate home for wounded soldiers is more than 350 years old. On 24 November 1670 Louis XIV ordered Les Invalides to be built in Paris, and by 1676 it was ready, with a facade 196 metres long and 15 courtyards.
It was here that a crowd came for muskets on 14 July 1789 before marching on the Bastille, and in 1840 Napoleon’s remains were brought here. The king was building a shelter for veterans and ended up with one of the key addresses in French history.
Photo: DXR / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0England answered a few years later: in 1682 Charles II founded the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London. About 300 veterans still live there and are recognised by their scarlet coats: the Chelsea Pensioners.
Photo: Marathon / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0The closest relative of Kvit Kalyny appeared in 1919: in the English village of Enham, with support from King George V, wounded men were taught basketry, upholstery and gardening. After the Second World War the village was renamed Enham Alamein, and this work still goes on there.
Sport entered this story through the doctor Ludwig Guttmann, a Jew who fled Nazi Germany for Britain. On 29 July 1948, the day the London Olympics opened, he held a competition for veterans in wheelchairs at Stoke Mandeville hospital.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, public domain
By 1952 more than 130 athletes from different countries were competing at these games, and in 1960 they travelled to Rome. That tournament was later recognised as the first Paralympics.
In 2014 Prince Harry founded the Invictus Games: the Latin word invictus means “unconquered”. Ukraine first took part in 2017, and competitors from these games now live in Kvit Kalyny as well.
Photo: Kürschner / Wikimedia Commons, CC0Football after amputation
The next sporting link was added in December 2025: the Kyiv region’s amputee football team Burevii came under the wing of FC Kolos of Kovalivka. That means new resources and better conditions for veterans who lost limbs in the war.
Amputee football is played seven-a-side: 6 outfield players with a leg amputation and a goalkeeper with an arm amputation. According to the Ukrainian Association of Football, there are now more than 100,000 people with amputations in Ukraine.
Roman Lyndov, who kept goal for Burevii in autumn 2025, was wounded back on the Maidan on 18 February 2014 and lost his left wrist. After his recovery, he says, he realised that “life does not end”.
In spring 2026 18 teams started in the Ukrainian championship across two leagues, with more than 150 matches a season, and the Superliga winner earns a place in the 2027 EAFF Champions League. Kolos-Burevii plays in the Superliga too.
What this looks like on the pitch can be seen in the highlights of the Superliga match Khrestonostsi v Kolos-Burevii (1:1), published on the channel of FC Kolos Kovalivka.
From a village team to a patron
Andrii Zasukha was born in Kovalivka on 30 October 1986, so he turned 40 a few days ago. He is president of FC Kolos and heads the Kyiv Regional Football Association.
His club was founded in 2012 as a village team and reached the Premier League by 2019. In autumn 2020 Kolos beat Greece’s Aris 2-1 in the Europa League and lost to Rijeka 2-0 only in extra time.
Photo: Visem / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0In three years of full-scale war, the Svitanok agricultural firm, FC Kolos and the Andrii Zasukha Charitable Foundation directed more than UAH 422 million to aid, according to a count at the end of March 2025.
Besides Kvit Kalyny, that includes UAH 3 million for Okhmatdyt after the July 2024 strike, more than UAH 6 million for rebuilding in Vasylkiv and more than UAH 10 million for a memorial to the Heroes. This autumn the foundation also paid for young circus artists from Bilohorodka to travel to Croatia.
Mykola Kalashnykhead of the Kyiv Regional State Administration, December 2025I sincerely thank Andrii Zasukha for creating this place, for his systematic support of our defenders, and for the fact that charity for him is not a one-off gesture but daily work.
The Bucha native who scored against Rudakov
Vasyl Oleksiuk was born in Bucha on 22 May 1974, attended School No. 4 and graduated from the Kyiv Institute of the Ground Forces. After his service he taught military training and PE at a Bucha school, and in 1999 he became head of FC Bucha.
On 14 October 2001, the day Yuvileinyi opened, it was he who scored the stadium’s first goal, and against Yevhen Rudakov, the Dynamo Kyiv legend, who was 59 at the time. We described that day in the history of the stadium.
Photo: Bucha FM archiveVasyl OleksiukBucha City Council member, deputy director of the Andrii Zasukha Charitable FoundationIn fact, far more service members need this kind of support today, about 15,000. That is why such towns must be built and built again.
Oleksiuk was not Bucha’s only presence at the opening of Kvit Kalyny. Also there to support the veterans was Bohdan Matsyk, then 25, the Kyiv region chess champion, who met the full-scale war in the basement of his home on Vokzalna Street.
And in Bucha itself a barrier-free veterans space of its own is being set up, the Kyiv Regional Military Administration reported in December 2025. By its count, more than 80,000 veterans live in the Kyiv region, about 13,000 of them with a disability caused by the war.
A flower, a song and Pink Floyd
The guelder rose, or kalyna, is one of the most recognisable symbols of Ukraine. In spring it is covered in white clusters: the large outer flowers attract insects, while the small ones in the centre later produce the famous red berries.
Photo: Arnstein Rønning / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0The best-known Ukrainian song about it is “Oi u luzi chervona kalyna”: its lyrics were written in 1914 by Stepan Charnetskyi, and it became a song of the Sich Riflemen. Days after the full-scale war began, Andrii Khlyvniuk of BoomBox sang it on Sofia Square.
In April 2022 Pink Floyd used that recording as the basis of “Hey, Hey, Rise Up!”, the band’s first new song since 2014. The video with Khlyvniuk’s voice, published on the band’s official channel, can be watched below.
What comes next
The Ministry of Veterans Affairs speaks of a third phase of the town, and an outpatient clinic and a shop have been in the plans since the opening. This autumn the Andrii Zasukha Foundation agreed with Dobrobat on a rehabilitation centre and a Walking School.
At the opening, the regional administration said this experience could be extended to every community and district of the Kyiv region. In his latest post Oleksiuk put the goal more briefly: together, creating a space for the new life and future of the defenders.
As a reminder, a rehabilitation space for veterans has opened at the Kyiv Regional Hospital.
Nota bene
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