When Oleksandra Oliynykova won her first-round match at Roland Garros, she took out her Ukrainian flag. With a big smile on her face she ran to her father, Denis. “I said to him: ‘You saw it, my first Grand Slam victory!’” she said in her post-match press conference. Her father is in the Ukrainian armed forces and is on leave. “It was very important to me that he could see my first Grand Slam victory in real life.”
After the match, Oliynykova and her opponent Jelena Pridankina did not shake hands, although this is customary in tennis. No one expected that either: Pridankina is Russian and since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukrainian players have refused to shake hands with their (Belarusian) opponents. The Russian armed forces also invaded Ukraine from Belarus.
Ukrainian athletes regularly use their podium to draw attention to the war, which has now been going on for more than four years. But Oliynykova is among the most outspoken. If it were up to her, Russians would no longer participate in professional tennis tournaments, she said during Roland Garros NRC. Not as long as they do not take a clear position against Russian aggression towards Ukraine. “Right now I don’t see any Russian players speaking out against what we see happening.”
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Destroyed tennis club
Oliynykova still lives and trains in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. Her father and her boyfriend are in the army, she says. The night before Roland Garros started, a large-scale Russian attack on Kyiv took place. During a press conference, Oliynykova shows a photo of tennis courts destroyed by that attack, from the Lodovyi tennis club. “These are the jobs I spent my childhood in,” she says. “These kinds of things are so painful to see.”
At tournaments she uses press conferences to convey her message. “The Russian players support Putin and the war,” she said during the press conference after her first match in Paris, where she eventually lost in the third round to Russia’s Diana Shnayder on Saturday afternoon.
She points to pro-Russian posts on Instagram that have been liked by several Russian players. For example, player Alina Kornejeva liked a post about an infamous one pronunciation from President Vladimir Putin: “Russia’s borders do not end.” Many Russian players also participate every year in a demonstration tournament in St. Petersburg, which is sponsored by the Russian state gas company Gazprom. Gazprom is seen as an important pillar of Putin’s power. “They are participating in a tournament sponsored by a company that also finances Russia’s war,” she says repeatedly. “In my eyes it is like participating in a tournament organized by the Gestapo.”
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, no WTA or ATP tournaments are played in Russia. “The demonstration tournament is my only chance to play tennis in my home country and to show my family and friends good tennis,” Diana Sjnajder said on Saturday in the press conference after her third round match. When asked whether she felt the need to make her feelings about the Russian invasion and warfare public, she responded evasively. “I’m here to play tennis.”
Oliynykova reacted with annoyance to this again in her press moment shortly afterwards. “Of course you want [Sjnajder] not to give her opinion, because that would cause a scandal.”
Oliynykova during Roland Garros. In Paris, she speaks out during press conferences against the participation of Russian tennis players.
Photo Javier Garcia/Shutterstock
She views the silence of the Russian players as support for the regime, directly or indirectly. “It is important for propaganda that it seems as if everything is normal,” she explains. “And if you keep quiet about it, and we all continue to play tennis without talking about it, we create the image that it is all normal. And if everything seems normal, people in Russia have no reason to protest and stand up against Putin.”
Putin may have so much power, says Oliynykova, but the cultural aspect is largely beyond his influence. Therefore, it is important to him that famous, influential Russians, such as top athletes and actors, show loyalty, or at least accept Russia’s aggression. “Soldiers also love tennis or other sports, or music, for example. If their idols were to show: we do not accept it, if you commit these kinds of outrages, you cannot come back and live your normal life. (…) All these systems, including sports, work in the service of propaganda. So if players are against the war, they have to show it.”
The Russian players support Putin and the war
When asked whether the Russians in professional tennis do make contact out of sight and try to understand her, she is very clear. “No, they don’t try to understand me, because they don’t care. I will keep saying this, as many times as necessary: they don’t care that Ukrainians die, because they support Putin and Lukashenko [de leider van Wit-Rusland].”
Naturalization
Russian tennis players have not been allowed to play for their country since the start of the war, and are therefore not allowed to participate in national competitions, such as the Billie Jean King Cup for women and the Davis Cup for men. In recent years, several Russian tennis players have changed their nationality.
For example, Anastasija Potapova now plays for Austria, and Oksana Selechmetjeva, who lost to the Ukrainian Marta Kostjoek in the first round of Roland Garros, for Spain. Kamilla Rakhimova, who now plays tennis for Uzbekistan, called the decision in a post on Instagram “the right step for my future in tennis, both professionally and personally.” She emphasized that the step was hers roots would not erase.
“There are tennis fans who come up to me and say: I didn’t know this at all, now I don’t want to cheer on those players anymore!”
Selechmetjeva told the press in Paris that her decision had nothing to do with politics, but that she simply has better facilities for training in Spain.
Oleksandra Oliynykova therefore has no interest in their naturalizations and still refuses to shake hands with these players. “It may be enough for others, but I need an explicit position.”
The other Ukrainian players also did not shake hands with their naturalized opponents. The only exception is the now Australian Darja Kasatkina. In a certain sense she did speak out against the war, which she called “an absolute nightmare”. But for Oliynykova that is not enough. “You cannot talk about the war without mentioning the aggressor,” she explains in an interview with NRC. “I have never heard her condemn Russian war crimes, or Putin. That silence is still a sign of acceptance.”
Whether the players might be afraid of the Russian regime and the safety of family members in Russia? Oliynkova responds skeptically to that question. “This is about millionaires who are world famous. What are we talking about? The fact that they are not speaking out is not because they are afraid. If they fear for the safety of their family, they have enough money and power to take them away from Russia.”
Safe space
The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) is not happy with her outspoken opinions, says Oliynykova. “I tell them things that are not comfortable for them and not commercially beneficial.” According to her, the WTA’s criticism is that it criticizes individual athletes in its social media posts. “They say that I attack other players, but I just state the facts. If the facts are so negative according to them, why are they trying to silence me?”
The WTA is not responding at all to the show of support for the war that it believes the Russian players are giving, she says. “They come to me, say: be quiet, you are attacking the players, you are unprofessional. They say that the tennis tour safe space must stay. And then I come home to Kyiv and have to live among the explosions. I keep talking about these things because all of this actually affects my life.”
She says that the WTA has repeatedly threatened fines and even suspension. She would violate the rules of conduct with her direct attacks. “In the end they did indeed fine me,” she says. However, the amount was many times lower than what they had threatened. “They threatened a fine of $50,000 to $60,000,” she told American tennis journalist Ben Rothenberg in an interview earlier this year. She does not say exactly how high the final fine was.
In her press conference after her second round match, she voluntarily showed the press an emblem that was on her tennis bag, of the Kalinouski regiment. This is a military unit of Belarusian volunteers who fight together with the Ukrainian armed forces against the Russian invasion. “It is a gift from the people who fight with my father.” She says she had to remove the WTA emblem before walking onto the court because it would be against the rules to have something on your bag from a maker other than the tennis bag. But, she says, other girls, for example, hang all kinds of toys on their bags. “The rules apparently only matter if something has a meaning.”
Oliynykova does not dare to say whether the WTA will ever actually impose a suspension. “I hope not. But for me it is very important to continue to use my platform to state the facts.”
She sees that her words and actions have an impact. “There are tennis fans who come up to me and say: I didn’t know this at all, now I don’t want to cheer on those players anymore!” And so she will continue to use her platform to draw attention to what is happening, as long as she still has that platform. “It is a good motivation to become a better tennis player,” she says.
