This women\u2019s Roland Garros has been dominated by the Russian war in Ukraine<\/a> and the ever-widening chasm between players from the two nations, and between Ukrainians and Belarusians. <\/p>\n In tennis, more so than other sports, it has been a flashpoint ever since the 2022 invasion, perhaps connected to the large numbers of players from both Russia and Ukraine \u2013 seven from each in the WTA Tour\u2019s top 100, as of writing \u2013 and the fact that the world No 1 and undisputed best player in the world <\/a>is Belarusian: Aryna Sabalenka<\/a>. <\/p>\n Perhaps some of that too is connected to the one-on-one nature of the sport, the on-court aggression, the fact that inevitably there can be only one winner and the players essentially stare each other down until one blinks. <\/p>\n But most of it is to do with the players themselves: a cohort of Ukrainians passionately talking about the devastation in their homeland and presenting a united front \u2013 Oleksandra Oliynykova called it \u201cabsolute solidarity\u201d \u2013 and a generation of Russians who for various reasons, mostly unspoken, stay silent. <\/p>\n Marta Kostyuk<\/a> said after reaching the semi-finals<\/a>: \u201cThey are all grown-ups. They know what they\u2019re talking about. They know what\u2019s going on. They have phones. They have Instagram. They have news. I don\u2019t know how you can sleep at night peacefully when you know that this is going on, and you have nothing to say about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Those players still with family and friends in Russia can cite the fear of government reprisals against them should they speak out. Kostyuk was unimpressed by the argument: \u201cI know some people who have left Russia the moment the war began, who have sold all their business, who have left everything behind because they just don\u2019t agree with what their country is doing to other people.\u201d <\/p>\n She cited Daria Kasatkina<\/a>, who now represents Australia, having switched nationality in 2025 after coming out as lesbian in 2022 and who has also publicly condemned the war. \u201cPeople were coming to her parents, to her parents\u2019 apartment, and scaring them. It didn\u2019t stop her from changing nationality, moving out. I don\u2019t think she lives in Russia anyways, but the majority of players don\u2019t live in Russia.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, there is nothing that\u2019s stopping you if this is something you don\u2019t believe in. Clearly, they are not thinking like this, you know? After four years, I think they\u2019ve made it very clear whose side they are on.\u201d<\/p>\n Kostyuk\u2019s first-round victory was played in the immediate aftermath of a Russian missile strike which flattened a building a mere 100 metres from her family home in Kyiv. Her all-Ukrainian semi-final against national \u201clegend\u201d Elina Svitolina<\/a> was played hours after another deadly round of bombing across the country, with at least 18 people killed. <\/p>\n Kostyuk, 23, broke down in tears after both matches. She said after beating Svitolina: \u201cThe biggest thing I can do is sit here and talk about it so more people can find out about it so they don\u2019t get used to this terrible life.\u201d<\/p>\n Crowds and audiences of this French Open<\/a> are only seeing a fragment of what these players have had to endure for the past four years. Nowhere in tennis\u2019 traditional heartland of central and western Europe has had to live through an unending campaign of terror. <\/p>\n It has led to an unusually politically charged last eight, and final four. Kostyuk is the first Ukrainian woman into the Roland Garros semi-finals, where she will play Russia\u2019s Mirra Andreeva. Born in Siberia, Andreeva moved to Moscow to train before decamping to Cannes in 2022. Belarusian Sabalenka lost in the quarter-finals <\/a>to Diana Shnaider, who has been heavily criticised for participating in a St Petersburg tournament organised by Russian energy giant Gazprom.<\/p>\n From that final four the possibilities include a Russian-Ukrainian final and an all-Russian one. The former would almost certainly end with no handshake, no podium photo, and few of the usual polite remarks found in the post-match speeches. Is Roland Garros prepared for that?<\/p>\n For a sport which has an awkward relationship with its greyed-out players, who formally represent nowhere, it is a constant reminder of how the realities of geopolitics and war intertwine with sport. Since Anastasia Myskina became the first Russian winner of a major women\u2019s singles title 22 years ago, there has been a flurry: seven more titles going to Russia and six to Belarus. It is not an issue which is going away anytime soon. <\/p>\n Many sporting governing bodies \u2013 notably in winter sports, international football and athletics \u2013 have banned Russian athletes entirely; others, particularly in the Olympic realm, have allowed them if they pass at least theoretically stringent criteria. Tennis has always been one of the outliers, allowing them to compete as neutrals. Sabalenka has won her four grand slams without a flag attached to her name. <\/p>\n The sport\u2019s confused governance \u2013 with the four grand slams, two tours, and the ITF \u2013 has no doubt further complicated proceedings, with no real clear stance and the insistence on shuffling this problem under the carpet meaning the various governing bodies all look weak. Wimbledon 2022 was the sole major to take an actual stance and ban Russians \u2013 although ironically it was Russian-born Elena Rybakina, <\/a>representing Kazakhstan since 2018, who won \u2013 and was harshly penalised for that decision, with the ATP and WTA allocating no ranking points to the tournament and fining the AELTC and LTA combined a total of $2m. <\/p>\n There is no way to neatly tidy away this particular problem, with the sporting issue dwarfed by the huge political, ethical, and moral storm around it. As Ukraine\u2019s Oliynykova said starkly, when asked about the prospect of additional security in her third round loss to Shnaider, the bubble of a tennis tournament is a world away from the reality in her homeland. <\/p>\n She said: \u201cWhen I will come home, I will lay under the bombs. I mean, this war, it defines my life, because my future is in Ukraine. My father, he\u2019s coming back to the army. My boyfriend, he\u2019s a soldier. Everything in my life is defined by war.\u201d<\/p>\n That is a reality which this French Open is throwing into sharp relief \u2013 with little leadership in sight on how to deal with it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,41733,346907,100456,85,747],"class_list":["post-714396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-elina-svitolina","tag-french-open-tennis","tag-marta-kostyuk","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Ukrainian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2258083114...jpeg\")
Ukrainian players have a longstanding policy of not shaking hands with Russian opponents (Getty)<\/p>\n![\"Kostyuk](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2279417806...jpeg\")
Kostyuk dedicated her all-Ukrainian tie with Svitolina to he compatriots back home (Getty)<\/p>\n![\"Ukraine\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2026-05-30T103110Z_1262143134_UP1EM5U0T7XKX_RTRMADP_3_TENNIS-FRENCHOPEN.JPG\")
Ukraine\u2019s Oleksandra Oliynykova heavily criticised Russia\u2019s Diana Shnaider for participating in a tournament sponsored by Gazprom (Reuters)<\/p>\n