Anastasiia Shabotova

Anastasiia Sergeevna Shabotova (Анастасия Сергеевна Шаботова; Анастасія Сергіївна Шаботова; born 17 January 2006) is a Russian-Ukrainian figure skater.

Competing for Ukraine, she is the 2021 CS Denis Ten Memorial Challenge bronze medalist and a three-time Ukrainian national champion (2020–2022).

Shabotova was born in Moscow, Russia on 17 January 2006.

Her mother, Irina, is Ukrainian, and her maternal grandparents continue to live in Ukraine.

Shabotova began skating in 2009 under Irina Strahova in Moscow at the Moskvich School.

Shabotova is the 12th woman to land a triple Axel internationally and the first Ukrainian woman.

She moved to train Svetlana Panova and Tatiana Moiseeva at the Snow Leopards Sports School in the 2017–18 season.

When asked if the skaters at Khrustalny (skaters coached by Eteri Tutberidze, Daniil Gleikhengauz, and Sergei Dudakov, including 2018 Olympic Champion Alina Zagitova) were doping, Shabotova responded: "Of course they do."

In response, Tutberidze told the media that she was disappointed that younger skaters viewed doping as the key to success rather than putting in hard work on the ice.

Shabotova's comments led to her being cyberbullied by the Russian figure skating community.

Representatives of the Sambo-70 club, home of Khrustalny, demanded punishment for her, and many coaches and prominent figures around the sport regarded her as a persona non grata.

However, several fellow athletes and fans came to Shabotova's defense, including two-time World Champion Irina Slutskaya.

Figure Skating Federation of Russia president Aleksandr Gorshkov and Shabotova's coach, Svetlana Panova, both dismissed Shabotova's comments as nonsense.

They attributed her comments to her youth and naivety, as well as being asked leading questions.

Panova disciplined the skater over her comments but expressed that she did not wish to see Shabotova seriously punished for comments obviously meant in jest.

Shabotova's mother also insisted that her daughter did not understand the severity of her comments and was repeating words she may have incorrectly interpreted from gossip around her, and implied that her daughter did not know the difference between doping and taking vitamin supplements.

As punishment for her words, her mother confiscated her smartphone.

She then asked that Shabotova's career not be ruined over her careless comments.

Russian Anti-Doping Agency head Yuri Ganus promised to hold an explanatory conversation with Shabotova and announced that RUSADA was investigating whether there was any truth to her comments.

Representatives of the Moscow City Sports Department also spoke to Shabotova about the validity of her comments.

Shabotova later posted a video on her Instagram account to apologize, stating: "I said something stupid, maybe because I lost in my latest competition. I didn't think they'd misunderstand me."

In February 2022, in the wake of Kamila Valieva's doping controversy, Shabotova commented upon request by the Russian news outlet Championat that "I believe none of us really think anything about the scandal (with Valieva). I simply read about what's going on, and then I immediately forget about it. Nobody really discusses it."

She commented as well that she felt only happiness to personally know the Olympic champions.

In March 2022, Shabotova liked Evgeni Plushenko's comments on Instagram describing the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine as an "unavoidable special operation".

Her behavior was harshly criticized on social media by her then-Ukrainian national teammates Anastasiia Arkhipova and Taisiya Spesivtseva; Shabotova removed her "like" after it was noticed by Arkhipova and Spesivtseva.

She responded to media requests asking if she supported Plushenko with the following comment: "I like whatever I want, but mostly that which is in my newsfeed. And to think that I support someone with my like is very stupid."

After removing her like, Shabotova posted on Instagram the caption: "My position has always been and will always remain this: the world should be without war, without death and fear of people."

For her behavior, Shabotova was consequently expelled from the Ukrainian national team by order of the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine and thereby could not compete at the 2022 World Championships to which she was originally assigned.

Plushenko later posted on his Telegram account that he was "ready to accept [Shabotova] into our academy [Angels of Plushenko] and provide all the conditions for training."

He confirmed that he had made appeals to the ISU, the Figure Skating Federation of Russia, and the Ukrainian Figure Skating Federation to allow Shabotova to train in and compete for Russia; Shabotova had originally transferred to represent Ukraine after the Russian federation blacklisted her for her comments on doping.

Shabotova's behavior supporting Russia also drew attention to her actions during the 2022 Winter Olympics a month prior, where she expressed support for Kamila Valieva amidst Valieva's doping scandal and expressed happiness at personally knowing the new Olympic champion, Anna Shcherbakova, despite the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine asking its athletes to refrain from interacting with the ROC delegation.

She also claimed to the media that her "native language" was Ukrainian and that she was born in Kyiv, despite her official International Skating Union profile showing that she was born in Moscow.

Shabotova originally competed domestically for Russia before requesting to switch nationalities to Ukraine in May 2019 after she made comments during an Instagram livestream that alleged widespread doping among top Russian figure skaters.

Although she achieved more international success for Ukraine, including representing the country at the 2022 Winter Olympics, the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine expelled Shabotova from the Ukrainian national team in March 2022 after she engaged in pro-Russia behavior on social media following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

On 21 January 2019, in an Instagram live question-and-answer session with her followers, then 13-year-old Shabotova claimed: "How to perform consistently? Drink a lot of dope, and you perform stably. That's all. You just need to drink the right dope."

Shabotova had limited domestic success in Russia, with her highest result being 14th at the 2019 Russian Junior Championships.

On 23 May 2019, Shabotova's request to switch nationalities from Russia to represent her mother's native Ukraine was unanimously approved by the executive committee of the Moscow Federation of Figure Skating.

Shabotova spent the summer training with Rafael Arutyunyan in the United States while keeping Panova as her head coach.

In August, Ukrainian national team head coach Marina Amirkhanova invited her to Ukrainian test skates, where she performed several triple Axel jumps.

She competed in the final segment at the 2020 World Junior Championships.