This was supposed to be a conversation about basketball, but things that are bigger than basketball ended up occupying much of Swish Appeal’s interview with Yevheniia Putra.
The 22-year-old 6-foot-3 center who is preparing for her sophomore season at Louisville is from Kyiv, Ukraine. Putra shared her perspective of the on-going conflict in her home country, as she recently traveled back to the United States after spending some time in Ukraine and seeing how it had changed.
Swish Appeal appreciates Putra providing insight into how the war affects the everyday lives of Ukranian citizens and how they are adapting to changing realities. Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
On the difficulties of traveling to Ukraine from the US:
I’m not going to lie, it’s very hard. Last time, when I was in a rush from USA to come to Ukraine to play 3-on-3 with my friends in the Red Bull Half Court tournament, it took me 54 hours to get there. It was the longest trip of my life. Normally, I’m going to Spain first, to my mom, if I need to give her my stuff or something. We don’t have direct flights from the US. So, you still need to go to Chicago or to New York, and from New York you’re going to Malaga. It depends where you’re staying.
Right now, I’m in Miami, so from Miami to, for example, New York, it’s like a couple of hours, [maybe] two. And from New York to Malaga, it’s eight and a half, nine hours. And after that, you’re going to Poland, and then to Ukraine. You don’t have direct flights from Spain to Ukraine, so from Poland you need to take a bus and the bus to Kyiv, where I’m living, is 16-18 hours. And there is hard border control… [but] the hardest [thing] is to leave Ukraine, because when you live in Ukraine, the Polish border control is very strict with us…Some buses can stay there for hours, like five, six, 10 hours just waiting on board.
On how she ended up playing college basketball at Louisville:
I was working with my agent, and he got me on that team. The woman that he worked with, she studied at Louisville, and she gave them some information about me, and we started to talk with coaches.
Actually it was funny because most of the time, when I was playing pro, I kept saying, “I don’t want to go to the US, I don’t like the US,”…[gasps] and when I talked to them for the first time on a video call, there were six to seven coaches and I’m like, “Hi, everyone.”
It was the first time I saw everyone, and everyone was trying to say something good about me or something about my skills, about what I can do, what I can improve, and for me it was like, “Wow, there’s actually another side of basketball I can try,” and I was very interested in that.
A special thank you to Marco Florio of 13 Basketball Management for arranging the interview.