Ukrainian tennis star Elina Svitolina has announced the end of her marriage with French former tennis player Ga\u00ebl Monfils, citing the emotional impact of the war in her country.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old, who is ranked number six in the world, wrote in a heartfelt post on Instagram about the effect the conflict and “what the war has done to me inside”. <\/p>\n
“This is the most difficult thing I have ever had to share,” she wrote, saying “I need to find my way back to myself”. Svitolina said she felt she could not do that within her marriage.<\/p>\n
She said her husband Monfils, 40, “listened” and “respected what I need with a strength and grace I will never forget”. <\/p>\n
“Some battles happen deep inside you, and no amount of love from someone else can win them for you,” the four-time Grand Slam semi-finalist wrote.<\/p>\n
It was “the hardest thing I have ever had to tell the person I love”, Svitolina said.<\/p>\n
“Everyone knows how much Ukraine means to me,” Svitolina, who grew up in Odesa, said. <\/p>\n
Ukraine’s Black Sea port city has been heavily bombed by Russia throughout the war.<\/p>\n
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.<\/p>\n
“What you didn’t see were the sleepless nights, the doubts, and the feeling of slowly losing myself.”<\/p>\n
The tennis power couple married in 2021 and have one child together – a four-year-old daughter called Skai.<\/p>\n
Svitolina said her daughter “will always come first”, adding “our marriage is ending, but our family is not”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukrainian tennis star Elina Svitolina has announced the end of her marriage with French former tennis player Ga\u00ebl…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-807724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}