135kg Giant Escaped Lukashenko, Now Fights for Croatia
Belarusian judoka Mikita Sviryd fled the dictatorship and gained Croatian citizenship, winning silver at the Grand Prix in Lima last weekend. He dreams of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Belarusian judoka Mikita Sviryd fled the dictatorship and gained Croatian citizenship, winning silver at the Grand Prix in Lima last weekend. He dreams of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
While Zagreb's Arena will host the European Gymnastics Championships this week, where Croatia pins its hopes on Ukrainian Illya Kovtun, there is another athlete who has found a new home in our beautiful country after fleeing war-torn Eastern Europe. This is Belarusian judoka Mikita Sviryd, a 135kg giant who won silver at the Grand Prix in Peru's capital, Lima, last weekend.
Mikita Sviryd (30), competing in the heavyweight category over 100kg, was a multiple Belarusian champion before coming to Croatia. For his homeland, he won bronze at the Junior European Championships in Malaga in 2016, silver at the U23 European Championships in Tel Aviv the same year, and then again in Podgorica in 2017. In 2019, he took bronze at the Grand Prix in Tashkent. After the pandemic-hit 2020, he represented Belarus at the Tokyo 2021 Olympics, where he broke his arm.
The turning point came in February 2022, when Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, partly from Belarusian territory. Belarus gave full support to Putin's regime in the aggression, and sports sanctions soon followed. Shortly after the invasion began, the entire Sviryd family found itself in Croatia, in Split. Father Leonid Sviryd, a former Belarusian national coach, now works at Split's judo club Student, of which Mikita is also a member.
Leaving Belarus is reportedly linked to the family's disagreement with Russian aggression against Ukraine, but Sportske novosti suggests it was more likely due to serious friction with the local federation and national team. Belarus, they remind, is the last classic communist dictatorship in Europe, ruled with an iron fist by Alexander Lukashenko since 1994. A year later, in an interview with a German daily, he stated: "...not everything in Germany during Hitler's time was bad..."
As early as April 2022, the Croatian Olympic Committee's council gave a positive opinion on accepting Mikita Sviryd into Croatian citizenship, with a similar recommendation issued for Ukrainian cadet Kristian Kohlov. However, the Belarusian Judo Federation refused to issue release papers without compensation. "The compensation demand was at the level of footballer Perišić," Sviryd stated in 2025 for Croatian media.
Mikita stayed in Split, training and waiting for his moment for a full two and a half years. Only from autumn 2024 did he gain the right to compete for Croatia. In his prime, between ages 26 and 29, he did not compete in official IJF events and had to adapt to changes in judo rules.
Since starting to compete for Croatia, he has won gold at the European Cup in May 2025 (the source, Sportske novosti, lists 1995, which is an obvious typo), silver at the Paris European Open in September of the same year, silver at the European Open in Ljubljana in February this year, and bronze at the Grand Slam in Tashkent a month later. Last weekend in Lima, he added silver at the Grand Prix. He is the Croatian champion in the over 100kg category and currently holds 27th place on the world ranking list.
With his 135kg, great endurance, and physical fitness, as Sportske novosti notes, he can be expected to qualify for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
