ANDlina Svitolina woke up one mid-March morning in Palm Springs, California, where she stayed a few days after competing in the Indian Wells tennis tournament, to frightening but all-too-familiar news: Russia had attacked Odesa, her hometown in Ukraine, once again. This time, Russian ballistic missiles hit a residential area in the Black Sea port city, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 70, according to Ukrainian authorities.
Svitolina, 29, was named the 2023 Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Player of the Year after returning from maternity leave: she ran to the quarter-finals of the French Open and the semi-finals of Wimbledon, where she defeated the No. 1 seed. world, Iga Swiatek in the barracks. She has also emerged as perhaps the most prominent and outspoken critic in the sports world of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. She is an ambassador for United24, an initiative started by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to raise humanitarian and defense funds for the country during the war. United24 has raised nearly $628 million in donations, according to its website.
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Svitolina’s grandmother and uncle remain in Odesa, but fortunately escaped the latest attack unharmed. Svitolina, who lives in Monaco with her husband, French tennis player Gaël Monfils, and their 1-year-old daughter Skai, tried to get her grandmother to move out of Odesa. But she refuses. It’s her house.
“People are kind of used to attacks, which is impossible, I think, for those of us who will never experience this kind of situation to understand,” Svitolina told TIME. “It’s very, very sad what’s happening now.”
She will try as best she can to keep her mind on tennis as Ukraine faces Romania in a Billie Jean King Cup qualifying match on Amelia Island in northeast Florida on April 12-13. the world this week (the US hosts Belgium in Orlando). All winners advance to the final, which takes place in November in Seville, Spain: 2023 champion Canada, 2023 runner-up Italy, host nation Spain and wild card Czech Republic. have already qualified for the 12-team event.
While each of the other clashes had a local fan base, the war made it impossible for Ukraine to host as they were supposed to. “We have to think about the safety of the teams, of people, and at this moment it is not even an option to play in Ukraine”, says Svitolina. “We hope that one day we will have good news of Ukraine’s victory in this war and we will host many more games in Ukraine.”
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In December, Svitolina’s foundation took over management duties for the Ukrainian women’s team at the Billie Jean King Cup and chose Amelia Island, at least in part, because it has clay courts. (The WTA tour begins its clay-court season in earnest later this month, culminating in the French Open.)
The Ukrainians told Svitolina that their pranks serve as a welcome psychic distraction. She spent a few days in Ukraine in February, running a clinic for a few hundred children in Lviv with Sergiy Stakhovsky, the former Ukrainian tennis player who served on the front lines of the war. “The children are mentally exhausted, mentally damaged,” she says. “They see their parents in constant stress.” She helped raise money to rebuild houses that were bombed in Irpin, near Kviv. Her foundation financed a series of five youth tournaments across Ukraine during the war; in November, she handed out trophies for an event at a bomb shelter in Kviv.
She plans to represent Ukraine at the Paris Olympics this summer and believes restrictions on Russian participation are insufficient. Although they will be excluded from the opening ceremonies, individual athletes from Russia and Belarus, who aided Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, will be eligible to compete in the Games, but not under their countries’ flags. Svitolina thinks Russian athletes should be banned altogether.
“Russia’s behavior has been contrary to what the Olympics and the Olympic movement are about, and that in itself should exclude them from the Games,” she says. “How is it fair for them to compete when they put Ukrainian Olympians at a huge disadvantage? Our athletes have gone to the front to protect us and our way of life instead of training and preparing for the Olympics.”
If Svitolina had an audience with Vladimir Putin, what would she tell him? “I don’t negotiate with terrorists,” she says. “There’s nothing I really want to tell him.”
As the war drags on, Ukraine will be watching the event this weekend and rooting for Svitolina and her teammates to reach the final in Seville. “I don’t feel like just a tennis player,” says Svitolina. “I feel like I have the opportunity to help and also play for the Ukrainian people, with their unbreakable spirit. Every time I enter the field, every time I play a tennis match, I represent the Ukrainian people and their strength.”
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
