Ukrainian Players Escalate War on Russian Tennis Rivals
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Oleksandra Oliynykova, the world No. 71 playing her first Australian Open, wore a post-match T-shirt reading "I need your help to protect Ukrainian women and children, but I can't talk about it here," saying the night before she left Kyiv a Russian missile struck so close to her family's apartment that it shook her bed.
- Oliynykova's father serves in Ukraine's 412th Separate Brigade of Unmanned Systems, and she runs a website crowdfunding mission-critical equipment for his unit, telling the press the site is "how I connect my tennis world with his frontline reality."
- Ukrainian players, including former No. 3 Elina Svitolina, Marta Kostyuk, Dayana Yastremska, and Oliynykova, are demanding the professional tennis world require all players to sign a written declaration condemning Russia's invasion and foreswear state funding, calling the sport's self-described "apolitical" stance a fig leaf.
- Aryna Sabalenka, the No. 1-ranked Belarusian who won a record $15 million in 2025 and four Grand Slams, was singled out by Oliynykova for ties to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko stretching back a decade; Sabalenka's sharpest public criticism was "I don't support war, meaning I don't support Lukashenko right now."
- Wimbledon banned all Russian and Belarusian players in 2022 who refused to explicitly condemn their governments, calling it "not allowing sport to be used to promote the Russian regime," but the three major tennis associations later passed a narrower prohibition keyed to the flag players compete under, not their nationality or views.
- Diana Shnaider and Mirra Andreeva accepted Putin's honors after winning silver in women's doubles at the 2024 Paris Olympics while competing under a neutral flag, and in November Shnaider and Daniil Medvedev played a Gazprom-funded event in St. Petersburg, according to the article.
- Daria Kasatkina defected from Russia in 2025 to become an Australian citizen, one of the few Russian-born players who publicly calls Putin's war a "full-blown nightmare," while Elena Rybakina (2026 Australian Open champion) switched from Russia to Kazakhstan in 2018 for non-political reasons and still holds a Russian passport.
Why it matters: Ukrainian players are now openly threatening to demand institutional action against Russian and Belarusian rivals, a step beyond the 2022 Wimbledon ban and the three associations' flag-based prohibition, and the sport's "neutral flag" workaround is exposed by cases like Shnaider and Andreeva accepting Putin's honors and Medvedev playing a Gazprom event while technically stateless on court. With the war past four years and 1.8 million estimated dead, the financial and competitive stakes are concrete: Sabalenka alone won $15 million last year while Ukrainian players say the WTA's "apolitical" posture converts rival prize money into propaganda for regimes waging the war.
Ask SkimNews
