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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… like it’s something that I try to do for my country, to see my flag raising and to see the tick with the win from my country,” the 30-year-old said.
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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 on February 28. Trump has since frozen military aid to Ukraine and suspended its intelligence sharing with Kyiv, emboldening Russia to step up attacks. Amidst all this, Svitolina said she had received an outpouring of support from American friends and fans.
“Since that meeting in the Oval Office, I got a lot of messages of support from the American people, just giving love and support to Ukrainians for people back at home. Also the massive support that I got taking into consideration that I played three American girls back to back to back,” added Svitolina, who has a two-year-old daughter with French tennis player Gael Monfils. Her grandmother and other family live in Odesa (city in Southern Ukraine) and Svitolina has been checking the news daily. Talking to family in Ukraine is hard.
“I know there won’t be good news. It’s been very long since there’s only bad news coming from Ukraine,” she said.
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