Putin is trying to ‘erase' Ukraine, tennis star warns

Russian president Vladimir Putin is waging war to try and wipe Ukraine off the map, the country’s top tennis player has warned.

- ALEXANDER BUTLER

Elina Svitolina, 30, accused Russia of genocide and urged the West to help bring back roughly 20,000 Ukrainian children deported to Russian camps since Putin’s invasion in February 2022. More than 70 camps used to forcibly “re-educate” children have been found across Russia, Belarus and occupied Crimea, according to the Ukrainian government.

Svitolina stunned the sporting world in 2023 after she beat world No 1 Iga Swiatek in the Wimbledon quarter-finals just eight months after giving birth to her daughter. Now an ambassador for charity Bring Back Kids UA, she told The Independent: “How we feel as Ukrainians is that the Russian government wants to erase us from the map.

“By taking our territory, by stealing our children, and launching missiles at us. This is genocide and they try to do it in different ways.” Svitolina is married to French tennis player Gael Monfils, who was ranked world No 6 in 2016. She gave birth to their daughter Skai just a few months after Russian forces invaded Ukraine in 2022.

She added: “As a mother, this work is very important to me. The children are our future. We have to act to bring them back. It is a terrible issue that we have here in Ukraine. We need to do something about it. It is not acceptable in our world.”