You're reading: Feminine glory for Ukraine

On Dec. 1, two Ukrainian females attracted the international spotlight in flattering ways.

The attention came as a welcome contrast to how Ukrainian women often get noticed abroad — with Femen-style baring of breasts for the cause-of-the week, or Odesa women who decide to remake themselves into freakish living Barbie dolls.

Instead, 10-year old Anastasiya Petryk and 27-year-old Anna Ushenina won for indisputably admirable reasons. Petryk captured the Junior Eurovision Song Contest while Ushenina was crowned the first women’s world chess champion from Ukraine.

“Through her good performance in the prestigious competition, Anastasiya Petryk has contributed to increasing Ukraine’s international standing,” Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych said to Petryk on Dec. 1 while congratulating her.

A native of Odesa Oblast, Petryk won the continental song contest with her impressive performance of the Ukrainian-language song Nebo (Sky), after working on it for more than a year and a half with her parents and teachers. She finished with a top score of 138 points in a competitive field of 12 countries, ahead of last year’s winner, The Funkids band, from Georgia, which received 103 points.

“We were trying our hardest and aimed to thrill Europe. We wanted Ukraine to be first and put it under the international spotlight,” her mother, Tetyana Petryk, told the Kyiv Post. According to Tetyana, Nastya thought up the idea for the song Sky. “That was her reaction to Michael Jackson’s (Earth) video,” Tetyana explained.

Her result is Ukraine’s highest in the seven years it has competed in the Junior Eurovision contest. Her older sister, 15-year-old Victoria, took second at the contest in 2008 with her song Matrosy (Sailors).

“I wanted my thoughts to conquer the hearts of the people,” Nastya said during one of the short interviews she gave right after the contest in Amsterdam. “My sister asked me to win, so I could continue what she did a few years ago.”

Before Nastya, Ukraine’s pop singer Ruslana was the first and only Ukrainian to bring the Eurovision trophy home in 2004.

Meanwhile, international chess master Ushenina has a similar success story.

She became Ukraine’s first woman to take top honors on the global chess stage. Her achievement comes ten years after Ruslan Ponomariov became the country’s first and only men’s world chess champion.



Ukraine’s Anna Ushenina (L) examines the chess board before the start of her world women’s championship tiebreaker match against Bulgaria’s Antoaneta Stefanova in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, on Dec. 1, which she eventually won to become the first Ukrainian champion. (Courtesy)

Ushenina defeated Bulagarian Antoaneta Stefanova in a tiebreaker in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia on Dec.1. A native of Kharkiv, she emerged victorious in a 64-player knockout chess tournament that started on Nov. 10.

“I’m very pleased with my victory,” Ushenina told the Kyiv Post after she came back to Ukraine. “Now I’m going to take a little rest as the championship was very tough,” she said.

Ushenina won the two-match tiebraker with a 1.5-0.5 score after drawing the first game with the black pieces, and winning the second match with white.

“With her victory Anna (opens) a new page in the history of Ukrainian chess,” said Viktor Kapustin, president of the Ukrainian Chess Federation through his press-service in a response to the Kyiv Post. “Ukrainian chess players are regarded as one of the world’s strongest, that’s why our female chess players were also favorites to win the women’s world chess championship.”

According to Ushenina’s profile on FIDE, the world’s chess governing body, her rating is 2452, and she carries the title of International Master and Woman Grandmaster. She will soon earn the title of Man Grandmaster, according to Kapustin.

Anna and Nastya said they are not going to rest on their laurels. Three days after her triumph in the Netherlands, Nastya went to participate in the Pesenka Goda (Song of the Year) Russian TV show. Ushenina will be soon getting ready for a match with a Chinese ex-world chess champion, which will take place in September.

“(Winning this match) is my major goal so far,” Ushenina says.

Kyiv Post staff writer Anastasia Forina can be reached at [email protected] and Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych at [email protected]