Putin's Purpose Is To Make Him Run And Hide. Mykola's Purpose Is To Run And Live.

Mykola Sagaidakovsky, 66, runs on the beach in Odessa, Ukraine. The war criminal Putin will not drive Ukrainians into bunkers 24/7. Like Mykola, they live with purpose. 

Please support this free newsletter. Share the story and, what the heck, buy a tee-shirt.

By Ray Glier

Mykola Sagaidakovsky, 66, heard the Russian suicide drone before he saw it. He was running on the beach in Odessa, Ukraine and the drone’s noise was unmistakable. It sounded like a small engine motor, like “a mini-bike”, he said. 

Then came the Ukrainian counter-measure of noise: sirens and machine guns.

The Ukraine military trucks with air defense weapons that were parked next to the coffee houses along the beach began firing at the drone. Mykola saw the drone then. It was 300 feet above the water, 500 feet away from him.

It reached the shore and disappeared behind a tree, Sagaidakovsky said. There was no explosion. Perhaps it was disabled, he thought.

Mykola kept running.

“I wasn’t scared,” he said. “It's not an underestimation of the level of danger. We know it is danger, we see danger on the street. We see destroyed buildings. We see too much destruction everywhere on TV.

“But it doesn't move us to hide every time. People behave differently. Some people are going to the bomb shelter every time they hear the sirens. Some never go to bomb shelters. Some do occasionally.”

Mykola Sagaidakovsky, who now lives in Lviv, has been a friend of Geezer Jock throughout this unjust war started by a war criminal, the president of Russia, Putin.

Mykola's fellow citizens are being murdered, or enduring freezing weather because Putin attacks infrastructure. On January 8, the Russians fired a medium-range "Oreshnik" ballistic missile at the Lviv Bilche-Volytsko-Uherske underground gas storage facility, one of Europe's largest. 

I had heard about this 60-something year old trail runner running through the woods daily collecting firewood in case the Russians disrupted gas and power. I contacted him two years ago because tyrants do not want the oppressed to run gleefully through the woods. Putin wants you to hide there and live in fear and live like rats.

Mykola, a data analyst, wasn’t oppressed when he ran. He was happy, and at ease. He was an aging fellow exercising and staying fit, as Geezer Jocks should. 

When he moved from Kyiv to Lviv, Sagaidakovsky ran daily to visit his aging father, also named Mykola. The father was in a nursing home. The son ran 12 kilometers a day, one way, to see his father. Sometimes Mykola would run from home, sometimes from work, sometimes he would stop at the grocery on the way and back with his familiar blue backpack.

Sagaidakovsky ran 6,746 kilometers from February 2024 to January 2025, or 4191.77 miles. That’s 349 miles a month. You can see a picture of Mykola pushing Mykola at the end of this story.

His father died at 93 years old and Mykola’s mileage fell back to a more sensible 300 kilometers a month. Now, he is averaging 200 kilometers a month, sometimes less with the snow and cold, but he makes up the exercise with skiing.

**

This week when I talked to Sagaidakovsky, he was walking home through the center of Lviv, which is in western Ukraine, 335 miles from the capital of Kyiv, the site of constant Russian bombardments. He had his camera on as he walked, pointing out magnificent architecture so far untouched by Russian missiles. One building’s plaque listed “17th century” as the date of its construction.

It was 20 degrees (Fahrenheit) and there were people on the street as the lights from shops and street lamps burned bright. On every block as Mykola walked there was a generator for those times Russia disrupts power. There are nights of blackouts, of course, but nothing as routine as the blackouts in Kyiv.

“Lviv is comparably safe, compared to Odessa, or compared to Kyiv, or compared to the cities in the east,” he said. “Lviv has been attacked several times, and some of them were really heavy attacks.

“Once I was sitting three hours in a corridor between the walls and listening to the cannonade.”

There are two things to mention about Mykola for Geezer Jocks.

While his wife Liudmila has gone to Odessa to care for her ailing mother, Mykola remained in Lviv after his father’s death for his job and to renovate the family apartment. As part of his fitness routine, Sagaidakovsky walks to the “construction supermarket” and totes back building supplies in his backpack. This also includes lugging cement.

How is that for a workout? I frequently see runners here in Atlanta with weighted backpacks, but they are always younger men and women. Just know, a 66-year-old halfway across the world puts his back into it.

One more thing. Mykola drove 335 miles to Kyiv recently and then 300 miles to Odessa to see Liudmila. His back ached when he got out of the car. His knee throbbed.

“The knee pain was absolutely unknown for me while I was running distances,” he said. “I was about to go to examination, but then I decided to get back to running. And when I was running with increasing mileage, the pain dissolved, disappeared, and now I forgot about this.”

It is the same at work. “When I spend more hours sitting on the chair, I feel a pain in my back,” Mykola said. “Therefore, balance is extremely important, balance of movement. I'm very rarely taking my car, just for necessity.”

**

The thing about Sagaidakovsky is he is a runner, but he will not run from the Russians. He didn’t run in 2014 when he and other Ukrainians occupied the square in the city center of Kyiv and demanded an end to the regime of a Putin puppet. Special forces opened fire on civilians.

“Russians accepted this form of government, we did not,” Mykola said. “We reject it. It is an unacceptable culture and an unacceptable way of living. There is no idea to surrender.”

Ukrainians died in the bloody city center in the revolution, and Mykola will not run and hide and dishonor them. He will just run.

“It is really essential for us not to be forgotten,” Sagaidakovsky said.

I hear you, brother. I hear you.

Please support Geezer Jock™

Mykola and Liudmila in Odessa.

Mykola pushing Mykola on one of his daily visits. "Mykola" is a family named passed down through generations.