(Indian Wells) Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk, qualified Thursday for the 2and tour of the WTA 1000 in Indian Wells, blasted the lack of support and empathy from Russian players, citing the war in his country.
Posted at 6:40 a.m.
“It’s very disappointing that no Russian player has come to me to tell me that they are sorry to see what their country is inflicting on mine. There are more Ukrainian civilians who died than soldiers, and among them children… it’s terrible,” lamented the 19-year-old player.
“A player texted me. Another came to chat with me, but no one gave me support or asked how I was doing. It’s shocking,” she insisted.
“It’s not about politics, it’s about human beings. It hurts me, it hurts me when I get here on the site, when I see these players, when I hear them say that their main problem is not being able to transfer their money or that kind of thing, this is unacceptable,” she added.
I don’t know why the Russians act like this. What is happening is no secret, we know what is happening, who is attacking the other, who is bombarding the other. It’s easy to understand and you can’t remain neutral.
The Ukrainian
Since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, the positions taken by Russian players have been rare: the world No.1 Daniil Medvedev has called for peace while Andrey Rublev or Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, finalist of Roland-Garros 2021, have said their opposition to war.
“Horrible to live with”
“But saying ‘no’ to war means a lot of things. “No to war”, can mean to stop fighting for example. But that’s not an option for us. So their press releases are meaningless to me. What do they want? That Ukraine loses, that Russia wins? I don’t know anything about it…”, she breathed.
Ukraine will never give up, but we know that Putin won’t stop either, he’s crazy. So we fight.
The Ukrainian
Kostyuk also expressed his “disagreement” with the decision of the women’s WTA and men’s ATP circuits to allow Russians to play the tournaments, without mention of their country or representation of their flag.
“I’ll make it short: look at other sports, what they’ve done. I’ll stop there,” she said dryly, referring to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) which called for the banning of Russians from international sports competitions, which many bodies, FIFA in the lead, have implemented.
Kostyuk further spoke about the difficulty of practicing his sport given the current situation.
“It was very hard to come on the court. When I woke up this morning, I didn’t think I was going to play. My family is there. You go to bed at night and you don’t know if the next day… It’s not an easy time, the first days were horrible to live with, but the nervous system manages to adapt, it gets used to the situation”, explained the 54and world player.
If it is programmed on the switchboard, it will see the Ukrainian flag flying next to the American on the roof. Whose yellow and blue colors were sported Thursday by Daria Savile (née Gavrilova), an Australian, Russian of origin.
Comments collected at a press conference by Nicolas Pratviel