He spent years playing and coaching hockey alongside the Russians. Then Putin invaded Ukraine
As Oleksandr Matviychuk sorts through the pile of hockey medals hanging in his Kyiv apartment, the 51-year-old proudly displays the ones he’s earned during his decade playing for Ukraine’s national team since 1999.
His eyes were then drawn to the medal he received in five seasons playing in the Russian Kontinental Hockey League between 1998 and 2003.
At that time, the Russians were his teammates and some of his fiercest competitors on the ice. Now, he struggles to even think about facing them again. Anger clouds his ability to visualize.
“It’s hard to imagine that you’re going to play in the same ring with them,” he said, speaking to CBC News hours after the Russian missiles. at least 28 people died in the attack on the Kyiv area on the morning of July 6.
“They just tried to kill our people. Why should I hear something different?”
Go down the ice and go forward
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Matviychuk’s decades of playing and coaching hockey came to an abrupt end when he signed up to fight.
Then in June 2025, his prime came to a violent end after he was shot in the face while trying to help evacuate Ukrainian soldiers surrounded by Russian forces.
At one point, he said, doctors weren’t sure he would survive. But more than a year and nearly a dozen surgeries later, her face has been rebuilt.
Now Matviychuk spends most of his time on his own dachaor a country house, which values quiet time alone. He doesn’t like to go out because of the way people look at him. Although Ukrainians are now used to seeing people hurt by the violence of war, he says, some still can’t help but stare.
“I don’t want them to feel sorry for me,” she said. “I don’t like it. I prefer to stay at home and not enjoy going out.”
At one point, hockey took Matviychuk all over the world, including North Bay, Ont., where he spent two seasons, between 1994 and 1996, playing in the Ontario Hockey League. He fondly remembers the tournaments in Calgary and points to a new hockey stick in his house that was signed by other players after the youth tournament.
After trading in his hockey skirt for a military uniform, Oleksandr Matviychuk was seriously injured on the battlefield. The former Ukrainian national team player is now undergoing surgery in Kyiv and is desperate to return to the sport he loves.
Matviychuk had taken a Ukrainian youth team to a tournament in Belarus just days before Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the start of what he called a “special military operation.” He recalls that many parents were worried about the trip because of repeated warnings from the US that Russia was ready to invade Ukraine.
Matviychuk assured them that everything would be fine, confident that Russia would not attack. When it arrived, he started reaching out to the Russian players he was still in contact with.
“Most of the Russian people … act like that bird hiding its head in the sand, just saying, ‘No, no it’s not happening …. We’re not doing anything,'” he said. “Some of the boys were saying please don’t go fight and you will be killed.”
At the same time, he said, some of his contacts in hockey in Canada offered him a coaching role in Alberta – a way to get him out of the country – but he declined because he didn’t feel ready to leave.
Instead, Matviychuk was assigned to Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, known by its acronym GUR. He had no previous military experience and didn’t know how to shoot a gun, but sports had made him strong and flexible, and he was used to working as part of a team.
But the analogy only goes so far.
“On ice, when you get blood, you just put a little ice on it, and it stops right away.”
He says war is very dirty.
‘The war is not over’
During the last four years, Matviychuk was sent on a tour throughout Ukraine, including over the border when it entered Russia. Although he could not divulge specific details, he spoke of shocking events, destroyed villages and near-impossible missions that sometimes did not go as planned.
In June 2025, his team was sent to help a group of Ukrainian soldiers move through an area encircled by the Russians. Their job was to get them out and take new positions. When they arrived, they were immediately met by Russian forces.
“We had to fight… as soon as we realized that these were not our boys [we] we should have seen each other.”
The Russian soldiers opened fire, and one member of Matviychuk’s group was killed instantly. Four others, including Matviychuk, were seriously injured.
“We had one guy who wasn’t hurt at all, and he was taking care of the rest of the Russians, so we could get out.”
Shot in the face and arm, Matviychuk applied his own tourniquet to his limb to stop the bleeding. He remembers walking to the exiting car while holding his gun, knowing full well that his face was “hanging”.
The next thing he remembers is waking up in a hospital in Dnipro, Ukraine. He was initially treated there before being transferred to Kyiv.
“When he came to us, he didn’t have a nose – the nose was destroyed,” said Leylya Omerova, a surgeon from Kyiv.
“This type of injury gives patients not only physical suffering but mental and psychological suffering.”
Surgeons reconstructed her nose, jaw and lips, and she has at least one more surgery scheduled for the fall.
Back at his house, he shows off some of the new medals added to his collection. He was given awards for his military service, but admits he doesn’t really know what each one represents.
They are not unlike his hockey trophies, where the trophies and team photos hanging on the wall bring back fond memories of competition and camaraderie.
“I want to go back [hockey]but I’m not relieved, the war is not over yet.
