after five years of marriage<\/a>, with the Ukrainian citing the mental toll of Russia\u2019s ongoing war against her country. <\/p>\nMonfils, 40, had been expected to end his career at November\u2019s Paris Masters, but the former world No 6 appeared on the International Tennis Integrity Agency\u2019s inactive list earlier this month. <\/p>\n
That brought his 22-year career to a premature close, with Svitolina, 32, explaining in a further social media post on Tuesday that Monfils made the decision to stop playing following their separation. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not always possible to explain everything behind such personal and difficult decisions in a single post. And honestly, some things are simply too personal to share publicly,\u201d she wrote on Instagram. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat was and is my view on announcing the end of our marriage but as some of you saw, Gael\u2019s career ended abruptly after he made the decision to stop based on our situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately he had many accusations thrown at him and he didn\u2019t deserve that, so we jointly released a statement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Svitolina wrote on Monday that the war in Ukraine had led to \u201csleepless nights\u201d and \u201cdoubts\u201d but said in her second social media post there her divorce from Monfils \u201cwas never just about one thing\u201d. <\/p>\n
She wrote: \u201cI just want to clarify my previous post a little, because I realised that not everyone, especially my international audience, fully understood what I was trying to say.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn that post, I shared only one of the reasons that influenced my decision and made me reflect on my life and my future. But the truth is, there\u2019s so much more to it, and it was never just about one thing.<\/p>\n
![\"Svitolina](\"https:\/\/static.independent.co.uk\/2026\/10\/20\/14\/2300464374..\")
Svitolina is a four-time grand slam semi-finalist (Getty)<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019ve been living through the reality of war for more than 4.5 years, experiencing so many different situations, emotions, and difficult moments, you naturally start seeing life differently. <\/p>\n
\u201cYour perspective changes, your values and priorities shift, and you begin to understand what you truly want out of life.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt some point, I simply realised that I didn\u2019t want to keep living a life where I wasn\u2019t truly happy. And believe me, coming to this decision was anything but easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Monfils played the last match of his career in September with a second-round defeat to Learner Tien at the US Open. <\/p>\n
Svitolina and Monfils have a four-year-old daughter, Skai, who Svitolina said they would continue raising together following their split. <\/p>\n
\u201cSkai will always come first,\u201d Svitolina said. \u201cOur marriage is ending, but our family is not. We will always be her parents, side by side, at every step of her life.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Membership today.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":809385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-809384","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\/809384","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=809384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/809385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Independent](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792562655_945_Independent+Membership+White.png\")
<\/p>\n