Donetsk-born Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games synchronized swimming champion Marina Goliadkina has said her "soul is breaking" over the attack on Ukraine and revealed that she received a mixed response to a social media post crediting Russia with "standing up" for Donbass.
The 24-year-old Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) star, who endured criticism from what she termed "haters" when she shared a photo at a post-Olympics ceremony with Russian President Vladimir Putin last year, said the responses to her words about Donbass had been split between negativity and understanding.
Goliadkina won a World Championships medal for Ukraine before leaving for Russia in 2014, claiming five world titles and Olympic titles since then.
The Moscow-educated athlete said she had trained despite seeing shelling and "how people killed their own" as a child in Ukraine.
"Many people we know remained in Donetsk, who said that the sounds of shelling and explosions did not stop for eight years," she added, later disallowing the comments function on the post in a move that is likely to have been a response to unwelcome replied.
"I wanted to reach out to the sports community and talk about what I saw with my own eyes," explained Goliadkina, who has spoken proudly of her exceptional achievements with Russia and told Putin that she had "defended the honor of a great country" after they met at an ROC ceremony.
"Everyone eventually read, apparently, what they wanted to read. But I take it calmly.
"Now people are [finding the situation] very hard, so I understand all the emotions. I just want no-one to cry and suffer. My soul is just breaking. It's very hard to watch all this."
Goliadkina said her own experiences in a place where children "had no childhood" had made her keenly aware of the sides involved in the conflict.
"It is a pity that the world community did not raise so much noise for the citizens of Donetsk and Lugansk [across] all these years, for whom Russia had the courage to stand up," she added.
"It is as if the people who used to live in Donbass have forgotten what happened there, and as if [that] war did not hurt anyone."
Russian athletes who have voiced their views about the conflict have risked criticism and punishment.
Double Olympic champion Evgeny Rylov lost a sponsorship deal with speedo and is being investigated by the International Swimming Federation after attending a concert in Moscow where Putin gave a speech last week.
There has also been pressure on sportspeople to denounce the attack, including a call by the UK sports minister for Russians to be barred from sporting events in his country if they do not distance themselves from Putin.