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For all the 128 players spanning the globe to have entered the French Open main draw this year, the women’s quarter-final line-up ended up concentrated in an incredibly small corner of eastern Europe. One Pole, one Romanian, two Ukrainians, and the remaining half of the competitors from either Russia or Belarus. Those four are represented in official branding by a blank white rectangle, a flag that does not exist and tries to blend into obscurity, but which cannot be whitewashed out of the conversation.
This women’s Roland Garros has been dominated by the Russian war in Ukraine and the ever-widening chasm between players from the two nations, and between Ukrainians and Belarusians.
In tennis more so than other sports it has been a flashpoint ever since the 2022 invasion, perhaps connected to the large numbers of players from both Russia and Ukraine – seven from each in the WTA Tour’s top 100, as of writing – and the fact that the world No 1 and undisputed best player in the world is Belarusian: Aryna Sabalenka.
Perhaps some of that too is connected to the one-on-one nature of the sport, the on-court aggression, the fact that inevitably there can be only one winner and the players essentially stare each other down until one blinks.
But most of it is to do with the players themselves: a cohort of Ukrainians passionately talking about the devastation in their homeland and presenting a united front – Oleksandra Oliynykova called it “absolute solidarity” – and a generation of Russians who for various reasons, mostly unspoken, stay silent.
Marta Kostyuk said after reaching the semi-finals: “They are all grown-ups. They know what they’re talking about. They know what’s going on. They have phones. They have Instagram. They have news. I don’t know how you can sleep at night peacefully when you know that this is going on, and you have nothing to say about it.”
Those players still with family and friends in Russia can cite the fear of government reprisals against them should they speak out. Kostyuk was unimpressed by the argument: “I know some people who have left Russia the moment the war began, who have sold all their business, who have left everything behind because they just don’t agree with what their country is doing to other people.”
She cited Daria Kasatkina, who now represents Australia, having switched nationality in 2025 after coming out as lesbian in 2022 and who has also publicly condemned the war. “People were coming to her parents, to her parents’ apartment, and scaring them. It didn’t stop her from changing nationality, moving out. I don’t think she lives in Russia anyways, but the majority of players don’t live in Russia.
“You know, there is nothing that’s stopping you if this is something you don’t believe in. Clearly, they are not thinking like this, you know? After four years, I think they’ve made it very clear whose side they are on.”
Kostyuk’s first-round victory was played in the immediate aftermath of a Russian missile strike which flattened a building a mere 100 metres from her family home in Kyiv. Her all-Ukrainian semi-final against national “legend” Elina Svitolina was played hours after another deadly round of bombing across the country, with at least 18 people killed.
Kostyuk, 23, broke down in tears after both matches. She said after beating Svitolina: “The biggest thing I can do is sit here and talk about it so more people can find out about it so they don’t get used to this terrible life.”
Crowds and audiences of this French Open are only seeing a fragment of what these players have had to endure for the past four years. Nowhere in tennis’ traditional heartland of central and western Europe has had to live through an unending campaign of terror.
It has led to an unusually politically charged last eight, and final four. Kostyuk is the first Ukrainian woman into the Roland Garros semi-finals, where she will play Russia’s Mirra Andreeva. Born in Siberia, Andreeva moved to Moscow to train before decamping to Cannes in 2022. Belarusian Sabalenka lost in the quarter-finals to Diana Shnaider, who has been heavily criticised for participating in a St Petersburg tournament organised by Russian energy giant Gazprom.
From that final four the possibilities include a Russian-Ukrainian final and an all-Russian one. The former would almost certainly end with no handshake, no podium photo, and few of the usual polite remarks found in the post-match speeches. Is Roland Garros prepared for that?
For a sport which has an awkward relationship with its greyed-out players, who formally represent nowhere, it is a constant reminder of how the realities of geopolitics and war intertwine with sport. Since Anastasia Myskina became the first Russian winner of a major women’s singles title 22 years ago, there has been a flurry: seven more titles going to Russia and six to Belarus. It is not an issue which is going away anytime soon.
Many sporting governing bodies – notably in winter sports, international football and athletics – have banned Russian athletes entirely; others, particularly in the Olympic realm, have allowed them if they pass at least theoretically stringent criteria. Tennis has always been one of the outliers, allowing them to compete as neutrals. Sabalenka has won her four grand slams without a flag attached to her name.
The sport’s confused governance – with the four grand slams, two tours, and the ITF – has no doubt further complicated proceedings, with no real clear stance and the insistence on shuffling this problem under the carpet meaning the various governing bodies all look weak. Wimbledon 2022 was the sole major to take an actual stance and ban Russians – although ironically it was Russian-born Elena Rybakina, representing Kazakhstan since 2018, who won – and was harshly penalised for that decision, with the ATP and WTA allocating no ranking points to the tournament and fining the AELTC and LTA combined a total of $2m.
There is no way to neatly tidy away this particular problem, with the sporting issue dwarfed by the huge political, ethical, and moral storm around it. As Ukraine’s Oliynykova said starkly, when asked about the prospect of additional security in her third round loss to Shnaider, the bubble of a tennis tournament is a world away from the reality in her homeland.
She said: “When I will come home, I will lay under the bombs. I mean, this war, it defines my life, because my future is in Ukraine. My father, he’s coming back to the army. My boyfriend, he’s a soldier. Everything in my life is defined by war.”
That is a reality which this French Open is throwing into sharp relief – with little leadership in sight on how to deal with it.
