How Pétanque Is Helping Heal Ukraine's War Veterans

In 2015, a Ukrainian soldier named Serhiy Khrapko was severely wounded by an anti-personnel mine, losing an arm and a leg. Over the following decade, alongside other wounded soldiers, he discovered pétanque. "Pétanque helps me improve my physical condition, to live better with my mutilated body," he told France 3 in July 2025. He now teaches the game to other soldiers, telling France 3 they can play "whatever their injuries", and that summer he travelled to Marseille as part of a Ukrainian veterans' triplette entered in the Mondial La Marseillaise à pétanque, the tournament that draws the sport's biggest stars every July.

Khrapko's story is not an isolated one. Across Ukraine, pétanque has quietly become part of the country's response to a war that has left tens of thousands of soldiers with life-changing injuries. What started as a pastime borrowed from France has become a formally recognized rehabilitation tool, delivered hospital by hospital by the national federation and its volunteers, and backed by an international fundraising campaign.

A Therapy Formalized With Ukraine's Ministry of Health

Pétanque first entered Ukrainian hospitals simply as a way to keep wounded soldiers occupied. After what the federation describes as a successful therapeutic trial, the Ukrainian Pétanque Federation signed an agreement with Ukraine's Ministry of Health in 2023 formalizing pétanque workshops for wounded soldiers in the country's health facilities. By mid-2025, according to the FIPJP's campaign press kit and France 3, the program was running in about ten hospitals and had reached more than 400 wounded soldiers, and the federation aimed to extend it to some 50 more hospitals by the end of 2025. Workshops were active in cities including Kyiv, Lviv, Kovel, Rivne, Khmelnytskyi, and Uzhhorod.

The project was initiated by Oksana Yudenko, vice-president of the federation, a lieutenant in the Ukrainian army who connected her love of the game with her work as a physiotherapist at a hospital in Kyiv. "At first, we introduced pétanque into military hospitals as a physical and emotional recreation," she told France 3, adding that it turned out to be a therapy that helped the soldiers' psychological recovery.

Why a French Backyard Game Works as Rehabilitation

Pétanque's appeal as a rehabilitation tool comes from what it does not demand. Unlike sports that require running, jumping, or heavy exertion, pétanque is a precision game: players stand in a small circle and throw metal boules toward a target, the cochonnet, using controlled arm motion. That makes it playable by soldiers who have lost limbs or are still rebuilding basic mobility.

At the same time, the game demands genuine motor coordination and concentration, qualities that matter for cognitive as well as physical recovery. And because it is played in small groups under clear rules, it gives veterans a structured, low-pressure setting to reconnect socially after trauma, rather than a clinical one.

The FIPJP's Pétanque Santé Ukraine Campaign

To help the program grow, the FIPJP (the Fédération Internationale de Pétanque et Jeu Provençal), together with the French federation and with support from other European federations, launched a fundraising campaign in June 2025, while Claude Azéma was still FIPJP president (Gérard Schneider succeeded him in October 2025). Officially titled "La pétanque au service des blessés de l'armée ukrainienne" and promoted as Pétanque Santé Ukraine, the campaign funds equipment, such as boules, measuring tools, and teaching materials, along with specialized training for the coaches and carers who run the sessions. Philippe Quintais, a 14-time world champion, is the campaign's patron.

Grassroots Clubs Filling the Gap

Institutional support is only part of the story. After Russia's full-scale invasion began in 2022, Dmytro Bugai, whom MindSite News describes as a co-founder of the Ukrainian Pétanque Federation, started teaching pétanque in parks near his home to bring people together. "This game can unite people, unite different generations, kids, parents, elderly people, veterans," he told MindSite News in September 2025. In Irpin, a city near Kyiv that was occupied in the first weeks of the invasion, most members of the local club have been trained to teach the game in military hospitals.

In Kovel, in Ukraine's Volyn region, the NGO Ukrainian Association for Health Protection "Marlog-Caduceus" and the Marlog volunteer logistics centre run a project called "Pétanque for Veterans and Defenders". The charity Nova Ukraine funded the town's first purpose-built court, which opened with a tournament in October 2024, with help from the Kovel city council and the federation. Later tournaments brought together veterans from Kovel and Lutsk and border guards from the 11th Border Detachment, and the project has since grown into a nationwide veterans' league.

Kryvyi Rih: Games That Bring Whole Families Together

Pétanque's role in Ukraine's veteran community extends beyond hospitals into public celebration. The 2025 Veterans Family Games in Kryvyi Rih, the industrial city in central Ukraine where President Volodymyr Zelensky was born, brought together more than 200 veterans and their families for a day of activities: a pétanque tournament, archery, art exhibitions, and educational workshops. Partners included Rotary Club Kyiv International, the municipality of Kryvyi Rih, the Ukrainian Pétanque Federation, and the Kryvyi Rih Youth Center, with deputy mayor Serhii Miliutin among those credited.

The organizers' message was simple: regardless of age, gender, or war-related injury, everyone can take part, and rediscover a sense of connection and belonging.

Lviv, 2026: A National Championship, and a Veterans League of Its Own

On 24-26 July 2026, Lviv's Stryiskyi Park hosted Ukraine's national pétanque championship. More than 100 athletes took part, travelling from cities including Kharkiv, Kovel, Uzhhorod, Mukachevo, Irpin, and Kyiv. For the first time, war veterans and athletes with hearing impairments competed in the national championship on equal terms with every other competitor, federation president Liliya Lytvyn said, and the men's team events doubled as qualifiers for the World Championship.

Among them was Ivan Drozd, a veteran of the Russian-Ukrainian war who competed for the team of Lviv's Unbroken rehabilitation centre, where he was treated after being seriously wounded in 2022. Drozd, who has taken up marathon running and lost his 20-year-old son in the war, had been playing pétanque for only about eight months. "Sport helps me keep living," he said.

Two months later, on 19-20 September 2026, Stryiskyi Park hosted a competition built specifically around that community: the grand final of the All-Ukrainian Veterans Pétanque League's Champions Cup. Some 165 veterans on 50 teams, from cities including Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Odesa, Kovel, and Rivne, competed on the first day before 32 teams advanced to the next round. Two teams from Lviv's Unbroken centre took first and second place, ahead of Kovel's Steel Legion in third.

A Small Boule, A Big Impact

None of this makes pétanque a cure for the trauma of war. But for soldiers like Serhiy Khrapko, and for the hundreds of others who have picked up boules in hospital courtyards and city parks across Ukraine, a simple French game has become a way back to movement, to competition, and to community. If you want to understand the sport that is helping make that possible, our beginner's guide to pétanque and guide on how to start a pétanque club are a good place to start, and our Pétanque for Players with Disabilities guide covers the official rule accommodations that make the game open to players like Khrapko.