Marta Kostyuk has announced that she will not take part in the charity event organized by the US Open to contribute to the rehabilitation efforts in Ukraine. The exhibition event, involving the likes of Rafael Nadal, Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff and others, is scheduled to take place one week before the Grand Slam to raise funds for those affected by Russia's war against Ukraine.
"Of course, I received an invitation. I think all our players got them. When Lesya Tsurenko and I found out - I'm only talking about us now because we didn't ask anyone - so when we found out that there would be representatives of Russia or Belarus at this event, I immediately said that I will not participate in this," Marta Kostyuk said.
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The 20-year-old was raging that no one asked the Ukrainian athletes if they were fine with the presence of Russians and Belarusians and also added that the authorities should have at least asked them beforehand as a common courtesy.
"First of all, no one asked the Ukrainian athletes if they wanted any of these players to be present. Of course, no one is interested in this, it is the Independence Day of Ukraine, but what Ukrainians think is not interesting, is it?" she added.
Marta Kostyuk also talked about the incident that took place at the Cincinnati Open where a woman draped with a Ukrainian flag was sitting at a match between two Russian tennis players. But then she was forced to leave the stand.
Kostyuk said, “I have a lot of comments on this topic. It simply does not fit in the head, how this could happen. The WTA is very protective of Russian and Belarusian athletes, they say that NONE (emphasis intonation) of them support Russia and they are all such good guys. But, as we can see, the trigger point in them is the Ukrainian flag.”
“And the fact that the trigger for us is those Russians and Belarusians who support Russia [in the war against Ukraine], no one is interested in that. That is, our requests to do something are completely ignored. We understood from the very beginning that they were clearly not on our side, unfortunately. But no one thought that it would reach such an absurdity. In the future, we hope that our actions will be known, we are engaged in this”, she further added.