THE RUNDOWN
Tennis power couple Elina Svitolina and Gaël Monfils have announced they are separating after five years of marriage.
In a joint Instagram post, Svitolina cited the war in Ukraine, her home country, as taking a major toll on her emotionally, saying she needs to “find my way back to myself and that I cannot do that within our marriage.”
Svitolina and Monfils married in 2021 and share one daughter together.
The Russia-Ukraine war, which broke out in February 2022, has so far cost an estimated 131,000 Ukrainian military deaths in action and 17,257 verified civilian deaths. CSIS data estimates close to 500,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the invasion.
Ukrainian tennis player Elina Svitolina, 32, and French tennis player Gaël Monfils, 40, one of the tennis world’s most beloved couples, have announced they are ending their marriage of five years in a joint Instagram post. World No.6 Elina Svitolina, who recently qualified for the WTA Finals in Indian Wells, attributed her split with former top-10 player Gael Monfils to the ongoing emotional toll of the war in Ukraine, which broke out when Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. While Svitolina has continued to deliver exceptional performances on the global stage, she shared that her resilience on court has been playing out alongside a deep ongoing national trauma.
“Everyone knows how much Ukraine means to me. What I have rarely spoken about is what the war has done to me inside,” Svitolina, who was born in Odesa, Ukraine, wrote. “With time, I came to understand that I need to find my way back to myself and that I cannot do that within our marriage. It is the hardest truth I have ever had to face and the hardest thing I have ever had to tell the person I love.” While Monfils has not given his own comment, he shared Svitolina’s post.
Svitolina and Gaël began dating in 2019 and married in July 2021. The couple shares a four-year-old daughter named Skai.
Why Did Elina Svitolina And Gaël Monfils Separate?
In an unflinchingly honest statement, Svitolina detailed the unseen emotional toll the war has taken on her personal life. She explained that “sleepless nights” and “doubts” left her “slowly losing” herself, leading her to realise she needed to heal outside of her marriage. “Some battles happen deep inside you,’ she wrote, “and no amount of love from someone else can win them for you.”
Image: Getty
The statement emphasises that the decision to separate is amicable, with no single party responsible or at fault. “Gaël has loved me through my greatest joys and my darkest moments, and I have loved him with all my heart,” Svitolina wrote. “There are only two people who loved each other deeply and a story that is changing shape.” News of the couple’s separation has shocked the tennis world, especially given that the pair took to the court together for the first time two months ago, playing doubles at the US Open.
Putting the couple’s public status aside, the announcement is a sombre reminder of the ongoing Ukraine war and its widespread impacts on citizens, whether they’re residing in the country or not. According to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, there have been around 131,000 Ukrainian military deaths in action and 17,257 verified civilian deaths, with the United Nations reporting that civilian deaths reached record levels this September as Russia intensified cruise missile and drone attacks. Despite this, media coverage of the conflict has waned. A study released earlier this year in the research journal Plos One revealed that international coverage peaked in March 2022 with 1.1 million articles recorded, which quickly declined to approximately 400,000 monthly articles for the year’s remainder and the subsequent two years.
The emotional toll of war — worrying for the safety of family members and seeing the country you love be destroyed — doesn’t cease if you’re not in the country, and Svitolina and Monfils’ separation is a prime example of the way it can indirectly (but fundamentally) change the course of your life, even if the news has largely stopped reporting on it.
Fashion Contributor
Noni Reginato
Noni Reginato is a freelance writer, journalist and word enthusiast. She took ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ a little too literally in her youth and pursued a career in magazines, working across print and digital for Vogue Australia, GQ, Vogue Living, InStyle Australia, Cosmopolitan Australia and T: The New York Times Style Magazine Australia. Her writing traverses fashion, culture, wellness and lifestyle, but really, she’s fascinated by anything zeitgeisty. She contributes to ELLE and marie claire Australia and writes a weekly Substack titled Refer To Instructions.
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