Ukrainian player Elina Svitolina renounces Roland-Garros because the conflict “has an impact on my life, my career, my personality”

She is not ready to take the racket back. Ukrainian tennis player Elina Svitolina is renouncing to participate in the Roland-Garros tournament which begins on May 22, she announced at the microphone of Tout le sport, Wednesday May 11. “I’m not 100% ready. It’s very hard to wake up every day with bad news. It has an impact on my life, my career, my personality,” testified the player who has put tennis in the background since the Monterrey tournament last March.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine almost three months ago, the player has always been committed to defending her country against the Russian offensive. A commitment that was reinforced by the presence of his family in Odessa, a port city in southern Ukraine. “For the past few weeks, they have been living in the basements every night because there has been a lot of shooting and shelling, which is still going on,” told Elina Svitolina. For now, the player does not know when she will return to the grounds, but certainly not until the war has ended.