Marta KOSTIUK: “The morning starts with checking if a family member is dead”

Last week, a meeting was held between Ukrainian tennis players and the leadership of the WTA.

The online conference was attended by Marta Kostyuk, Lesya Tsurenko and Elina Svitolina, and WTA’s Steve Simon, Vanessa Webb, Anya Wreg, Christy Ahn, Brandon Burke and Sloane Stephens.

The main topic of the meeting is the violation of the rights of Ukrainians and the inaction of the WTA in the propaganda and support of the military aggression against Ukraine in Tours.

Marta Kostyuk commented on the outcome of this meeting:

“I was in Kiev at the time of the meeting. The war is raging in my homeland and helping is extremely important right now. I was driving in the car and I listened carefully to everything that happened at the meeting, and when it was my turn to speak, suddenly an air raid alarm sounded (drones flew to Kiev) …

I asked a simple question – are we (Ukrainians) on equal terms with Russians and Belarusians? We cannot be safe at home even for a day. Training bases were bombed. The country is bombed every day. We do not have transport links with other countries. It starts every morning with checking to see if a relative or friend has been killed. We are mentally stressed all the time. And the moment I asked the question, I was in mortal danger.

And under these conditions we must compete with the representatives of the aggressor countries, because the WTA has decided not to dismiss them. Ukrainians are in this situation because of the activities of Russia and Belarus. In other words, these countries deliberately created an advantage for us with their actions.

No one answered my question… I repeated it over and over again… until I heard the answer from Sloan Stevens. He said that he didn’t quite understand what I meant when I mentioned equal conditions, but that the Players Council was ready to help the Ukrainians and they wanted to know what could be done for us.

I would like to note that this is the first time we have had a meeting with the Players Council representatives since the beginning of the war. Before this speech, no one was interested in what could and should be done to help the Ukrainians suffering from the war.”