Hockey Club Sokil Kyiv (Ukrainian: ХК Сокіл Київ; Russian: ХК Сокол Ки́ев, HC Sokol Kiev; English: Falcon Hockey Club), commonly known as Sokil Kyiv or HC Sokil, is a Ukrainian Professional Hockey League team based in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. While their home arena is located in the city, the team also plays out of Brovary, still within the Kiev region. They are a founding club of the Professional Hockey League of Ukraine, and have formerly competed in the national leagues of Belarus, Russia, and the Soviet Union. To date, Sokil remains the oldest and most accomplished team in Ukrainian hockey, winning 13 of the 19 Ukrainian Hockey Championships held since 1992.

The club was founded in 1963 as part of the Dynamo sports society, and adopted its current moniker in 1973. They are the second major-professional ice hockey team to represent the city of Kiev, preceded only by its short lived predecessor, also named Dynamo (founded in 1953). They are the most successful Ukrainian team to have competed in the Soviet Championship, finishing as high as third in the highly competitive circuit (1985) and producing several award winning players. In 1986, Sokil managed to become the first and only Ukrainian-based team to compete in the Spengler Cup ice hockey tournament, where they would finish 2nd. They also became the first Ukrainian team to win an international league championship, doing so in the Eastern European Hockey League consecutively in 1998 and 1999.

Guram Gugenishvili (born July 23, 1986) is a Georgian mixed martial artist who competes as a heavyweight for M-1 Global. A professional MMA competitor since 2009, Gugenishvili has mostly competed in Russia, most notably for M-1 Global. He is undefeated in his career to date, having taken the majority of his victories by submission. Gugenishvili is the current M-1 Global Western European Heavyweight Champion and M-1 Global Heavyweight Champion.

Gugenishvili began his professional mixed martial arts career in the M-1 Global organisation, debuting at M-1 - Donbas Open Mix Fight in Donetsk, Ukraine, where he faced Roman Bragin. Gugenishvili defeated Bragin via rear naked choke in the opening round. Despite the win, Gugenishvili was not retained by the organisation; instead, he joined the Makfight team, who host events as well as providing training facilities. In his next bout, Gugenishvili defeated Oleg Matveev again via rear naked choke, this time in just 31 seconds. This emphatic win earned Gugenishvili a place with M-1 Global, with their "Ukraine Selections" events. Gugenishvili went undefeated in these events, winning two by rear naked choke and a third by unanimous decision.

David Tkeshelashvili (Georgian: დავით ტყეშელაშვილი) (born October 16, 1969) is a Georgian politician who currently serves as the Head of Presidential Administration of Georgia.

Tkeshelashvili was born on October 16, 1969 in Tbilisi, Georgia. In 1987-1989, he served in the Soviet Army. After dissolution of Soviet Union, he worked as the head, political secretary and deputy chairman of the Regional Department of the Citizens' Union's Youth Branch in 1993-1995, serving as the organization's press secretary from 1994 to 1995. In 1995, he was elected to the Georgian Parliament becoming deputy majority leader. A year later, Tkeshelashvili graduated from Tbilisi State University with a degree in Law. In 1998-2002, he was the chairman of the youth branch of the Citizen's Union. In 1999, he was re-elected to the parliament, working as chairman of the Subcommittee for Relations with Media and Non-governmental Organizations of the Human Rights Committee from 1999 through 2003. In 2004, Tkeshelashvili was re-elected as MP for the third term from National Movement - Democrats. The following year, he won Edmund S. Muskie scholarship, subsequently obtaining LLM from Emory University in 2006. At the university, he was conferred with Sheth Distinguished International Alumni Award.

Maria Sokil (Rudnytsky) (1902-1999) was a famous Ukrainian opera singer.

Sokil was born in the village of Zherebets' (now Kirov) in the Zaporizhia Oblast on October 19, 1902. She studied at the conservatory in Dnipropetrovsk from 1920 to 1925.

She made her opera debut in Kharkiv in 1927 in the role of Marguerite in Gounod's opera Faust and became the prima donna lyric soprano of that opera theater. In 1929, she and bass Ivan Patorzhynsky, representative singer from the Ukraine, went on a concert tour to Germany and Italy.

Maria remained in Kharkiv until 1930; later, she joined the Kiev Opera (1930-1932).

Later, from 1932, Maria Sokil performed at the Lviv Opera and Ballet Theater and, with her husband Antin Rudnytsky (1902-1975) (they married in 1931), toured a number of countries in Eastern and Central Europe for the next several years coming with concerts to the United States and Canada in 1937 and then again in 1938-1939 and then remaining in the United States when World War II started.

She had success with the roles of Desdemona (Verdi's Otello), Mimi (Puccini's La Bohème), Liu (Puccini's Turandot), Elsa (Richard Wagner's Lohengrin), Tatiana (Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin), Lisa (Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades), Odarka (Hulak-Artemovsky's Zaporozhets za Dunayem), and Natalka (Lysenko's Natalka Poltavka).