Aryna Sabalenka broke the silence. A clear position on the war in Ukraine

The best tennis player in the world is the heroine of a cover interview for “Vouge” magazine. Aryna Sabalenka touches on many topics, interestingly enough, including those that she has not talked about in detail for a long time. Example? The ongoing war in Ukraine.

Aryna Sabalenka about the war in Ukraine. “He told me I was the one dropping the bombs.”

In fact, since the war broke out across our eastern border at the end of February 2022, the tennis authorities have decided that the representatives of the Russian and Belarusian national teams cannot perform under their respective flags.

In this way, Sabalenka became “neutral”. Although it is no secret that the dictator, Aleksandr Lukashenko, president of Belarus since 1994, was often warm towards the athlete.

Sabalenka herself rarely spoke publicly about the war. And these were certainly not the broader statements that the tennis player made in her interview for Vogue.

This was a response to the issue of the lack of handshaking among Ukrainian tennis players, who regularly compete with the leader of the WTA ranking on tour.

– I respect this position. I know it’s nothing personal. This is how they send a signal. But it was hard, the amount of hate I got from people during tournaments. One of the coaches got mad and told me I was dropping bombs. It’s obvious that I want peace for everyone. I don’t want this war to happen. They should come to the table and negotiate this shit out. However, I also believe that sport is a platform and a place where we can unite and not fight each other as if we were fighting our own war. Let’s gather, let’s be together, let’s show peace. For so long, Ukrainians and Belarusians were like brothers and sisters. We are the same. We are all closely connected to each other. And now there is a huge wall between us and I don’t know if it will ever disappear, admitted the tennis player from Minsk.

Unfortunately, although more than 4 years have passed since the outbreak of the war, and Russian actions in Ukraine have actually been going on for much longer, there is no end to this aggression in sight.