Ukraine's sports minister Matviy Bidnyi has told AFP that despite Russian forces still occupying Ukrainian territory three years after they invaded he is focusing on helping build the country that more than 600 athletes and coaches killed in the conflict "dreamed of and died for".

One of the biggest building blocks towards achieving that goal is a reform which will further erase the legacy left by Ukraine's former Soviet masters.

"We are on the brink of a major sports reform: dismantling the Soviet totalitarian system and introducing a European club-based model, drawing primarily on the experience of France (in elite sport) and Poland (in mass sport)," he told AFP in an interview by email.

Bidnyi said jettisoning another hangover from the Soviet era would be a liberating experience.

"W

See Full Page