Indian Wells (United States) (AFP) – Elina Svitolina toppled fourth-ranked American Jessica Pegula to reach the Indian Wells quarter-finals on Tuesday, one more little victory for her beleaguered home country of Ukraine.
“I feel like I need to play well,” the 30-year-old said. “I feel like it’s something that I try to do for my country — you know, to see my flag raising and to see the tick with the win from my country.”
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Three years on from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, tensions have mounted in recent weeks — notably as US President Donald Trump feuded publicly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House Oval Office. Trump has since frozen military aid to Ukraine and suspended its intelligence sharing with Kyiv, emboldening Russia to step up attacks.
Amid it all, Svitolina said she had received an outpouring of support from American friends and fans. She offered her thanks in a social media post, and said since the February 28 falling out between Trump and Zelensky, the support had increased.
“I feel like since that meeting in the Oval Office, I got a lot of messages of support from the American people and also, you know, a lot of people here when I arrived at the tournament, just giving the love and support to Ukrainians for people back at home. So, yes, it’s just based on personal experience that I had here. Also the massive support that I got taking into consideration that I played three American girls back to back to back.”
Svitolina, who has a two-year-old daughter with French tennis player Gael Monfils, says she has become a master of compartmentalizing as she tries to keep up with developments at home, spend time with her young family on the road, and keep in touch with her grandmother and other family in Odesa. She travels there periodically to spend time with family and do work for her charitable foundation.
“I try to really split the time where I’m looking at the news. I’m checking the news still every day, couple times a day, especially right now where there is a lot of news coming. There is time for that and there is time also for tennis. There is time for training and recovery and just completely switch off from everything. Also time with my family. You know, I have my daughter here. You know, Gael is here also. So, you know, it’s nice to sometimes switch off completely from what’s going on.”
Talking to family in Ukraine is hard, she said, “because I know that they are not going to be good news. It’s been a very long time that there is only bad news coming from Ukraine.”
© 2024 AFP
