83-year-old climbing coach Liliya Samsonova has continued to train children in Kharkiv, Ukraine during the war as residents return to the severely damaged city.

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Kharkiv, a Ukrainian city near the border with Russia, was heavily shelled throughout the first six months of the war when occupying Russian troops attempted to seize the city and almost succeeded. Most of its citizens fled. In September 2022, Russian forces were repelled from Kharkiv Oblast. People started to return. Liliya Samsonova, an 83-year-old accomplished Ukrainian climber, skier, sports manager and coach, was one of them.

Samsonova is the director of Kharkiv's Piatykhatky Sports Complex, 20 km from the Russian border. Over the last 60 years, she has played an influential role in creating Ukrainian national and world champions in climbing. 

In January 2023, Samsonova returned from her evacuation period in Dnipro City and resumed climbing coaching for children.

Throughout the winter, Russian forces attempted to plunge Ukraine into a complete blackout through heavy shelling. After the central heating pipes burst in the sports complex, Samsonova held training sessions in freezing temperatures in a small bouldering room on the fourth floor of the building.

'The complex is in desperate condition,' Samsonova said. 'It is 30% damaged and 70% has survived. The roof is leaking, the windows are missing. Volunteers helped me to board up the windows with panels.'

Samsonova turned on electric heaters in the morning to ensure that the room was warm enough by afternoon sessions. 'The temperature rose to about 16 °C,' she said.

The bouldering wall is so small that one Ukrainian climber joked that the problems consist of 'a lie-down start and sit-down finish.'

Nonetheless keen to climb, Samsonova and her young protégés, who number around 50, are training here three times a week.

'I do what I can,' she said.

Climbing equipment in the facility has become scarce. The sports complex was completely looted while it was abandoned at the beginning of the war.

'Literally nothing is left : computers, a music recorder I bought myself for competitions and other events, heaters, a TV for technique learning. It's a pity that everything is gone. There is no equipment,' Samsonova explained.

'The worst is that we have no climbing shoes and harnesses. We need children's climbing shoes, but we have no money.'

To support Samsonova's sessions, the city of Kharkiv allocated about UAH 10,000 (about £200), enabling her to buy a few carabiners and a rope.

'We train as we are, mostly in running shoes,' she said. 'Some people donate equipment, but it's not enough. Climbing shoes are the main problem, especially the lack of children's shoes, because technique suffers from training in regular shoes. They will need to learn it again and it's actually harder this way than to learn from scratch,' the coach said.

Despite these difficulties, the sessions help to engage children and give them a sense of normality in the war-torn city.

'They come alive here,' Samsonova said.

The children's dedication under Samsonova's watchful eye is paying off. After just two and a half months of training post-evacuation, one member of the group, Mykyta Abramkin, placed 4th and 6th in rounds of the European Youth Cup and won silver in Ukraine's Youth Speed Championships.

Another of Samsonova's athletes, Leonid Osadchyi, was encouraged to go abroad to train and compete internationally as part of the Ukrainian national team. She coaches him remotely.

'Liliya is a really great person who loves her job,' Osadchyi said. 'As a coach she understands that a lot of people won't continue climbing as a professional career, so she is always trying to teach children to be good humans, first of all. Liliya is not a commercial person, therefore training fees just support club existence and despite this she helps poor families who can't afford climbing gear to make it possible for children to follow their dreams.'

Occasionally, the group climb outdoors on local crags.

'We've also been to crags in Chykalivka in a former granite quarry,' Samsonova said. 'We went there with older children and their parents for three days. It would be nice to get them to some big climbing areas such as Bookie or Dovbush Rocks. But they were excited with what we had. And now they keep asking if we can go again?'

While her youngest participants can benefit from this distraction from the war, some former students are engaged in defending their native country. Maksym Osipov (multiple World Champion in Speed) is currently serving in the Ukrainian army.

'I didn't expect it of him, but he was among the first to volunteer,' Samsonova said.

Alexandr Zakolodniy, a renowned Ukrainian mountaineer, world champion, coach and climbing wall owner who was killed in close combat in Soledar near Bakhmut, was among Samsonova's protégés. He was heavily involved in the liberation of his home region of Kharkiv Oblast in September 2022.

'He was just 35 years old,' she said. 'He had a lot ahead of him. It's simply impossible to say how sorry I am. I feel sorry for all the kids - that they are suffering for this war.'

Samsonova also experienced war as a child. She was born in 1939 in Belarus, which at the time was part of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR). Her family lived in Minsk — one the first cities to be destroyed by the Luftwaffe as part of Operation Barbarossa. Her mother took Samsonova and her older sister and fled to Saratov Oblast in the Russian RSFSR.

'I don't remember anything about the war, ' she said. 'But I remember well the Soviet famine of 1947, when we had nothing to eat.'

Samsonova's passion for climbing and helping others sustains her. Despite having undergone surgery last December and her advancing years, she continues to stay active.

'However, age isn't only a number, it also affects health,' she says.

'Some people asked me how I cope with everything. I said I don't know. Coming here, I forget about everything and can cope with everything.'

24/09/23 - Update from the author, Anna Schliakova:

'Liliya's only son, Serhiy Shalyhin, 52, was killed while evacuating people from Kupyansk in Kharkiv Oblast. He was a volunteer. A Russian missile hit the van and killed everyone inside: two volunteers, another two women, and four men. Shalyhin's wife was in the following car and witnessed everything with her own eyes. It's a terrible war.'