What is Ukrainian tennis player Elina Svitolina doing to help her country?

Elina Svitolina rose to fame in 2015 on the back of a run to the French Open quarterfinals and reaching the semis of the season-ending WTA Elite Trophy. The following year, she cemented her own status as an elite player with a win over Serena Williams at the 2016 Olympics and a first final at the WTA end-of-year showpiece. She would go on to reach a career-high of world number three to become the highest-ranked Ukrainian player of all time and has won 16 WTA Tour titles including the Tour Finals in 2018, as well as making the semis at Wimbledon and the US Open in 2019 and claiming Olympic bronze at the Tokyo Games last year. Now, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Svitolina has embarked on a new mission, one that has led to her being named an ambassador for her country and to talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, giving her a completely new focus away from the courts.

Svitolina announced she was taking a break from tennis earlier this year and has since married her long-term boyfriend, French tennis star Gaël Monfils, and announced the couple are expecting a child. But far from taking time out, the 27-year-old has thrown herself into her own charitable foundation and UNITED24, an initiative led by Zelenskyy to raise funds for Ukraine’s defenders and for food and medical supplies for the war-torn country. Svitolina was born in Odessa, which has been blockaded since the Russian invasion, and later moved to Kharkiv, the scene of vicious fighting earlier in the war and a city now under siege and at the mercy of Russian missile attacks after Ukrainian forces pushed the invaders back after the Kremlin’s initial assault.

Svitolina: “Zelenskyy loves Ukraine and he will die for our country”

Speaking to CNN, Svitolina said she was aiming to do something to help her country and had devoted her time to UNITED24 after talks with Zelenskyy. “What he does, it takes a lot of courage. He just explained what Ukraine really needs these days and how he sees the situation in Ukraine right now. He’s still very, very much motivated and he loves Ukraine and he will die for our country.” She also said she speaks to her family and friends in Ukraine as often as possible. “I speak with my grandmother every day to know how she feels. It’s quite tough for her because for elderly people it’s most important to have a routine and, right now, there is lots of bombing and shooting going on in Odessa, in my hometown. It is important to stay in touch everyday with her to support her in any way that I can. One of the most important things as well is to keep their spirits up.”

Earlier this year, before her hiatus from the Tour, Svitolina pledged to donate all of her prize money to the Ukrainian defence forces and humanitarian causes in her home country. “My people, every day I fear for you. I am devastated, my eyes won’t stop crying, my heart won’t stop bleeding. But I am so proud. See our people, our mothers, our fathers, our brothers, our sisters, our children, they are so brave and strong, fighting to defend you. They are heroes. I commit to redistribute the prize money of my next tournaments to support army and humanitarian needs and help them to defend you, our country. Ukraine, you unify us, you are our identity. You are our past and our future. We are Ukraine,” she wrote on social media.

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“If players don’t speak out it is right to ban them”

Svitolina has also criticized the US Open for not banning Russian and Belarussian players from competing at Flushing Meadows this year, as Wimbledon did at the All-England Club. However, she also expressed her opinion that players who speak out against the invasion should be allowed to compete. We don’t want them banned completely,” Svitolina told the BBC in April. “If players don’t speak out against the Russian government then it is the right thing to ban them. We just want them to speak up, if they are with us and the rest of the world or the Russian government. This is for me the main point.”