Ukrainian tennis star warns that Putin is trying to “erase us”

Ukrainian tennis player Elina Svitolina, the current world number 27, has claimed the Russian invasion of Ukraine is tantamount to genocide in an interview with The Independent.

Svitolina claimed, “How we feel as Ukrainians is that the Russian government wants to erase us from the map,” after a study by Yale University revealed that thousands of children had been placed in camps to “re-educate” them.

The 2023 Wimbledon semi-finalist continued, “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.”

Want to see more like this? Follow us here for daily sports news, profiles and analysis!

Svitolina is working with Bring Back Kids UA, a charity formed to bring back children who have been forcibly removed from their homes in Ukraine.

The Independent reports upwards of 20,000 children have been deported to camps since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s Russian forces

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe has claimed Russia is not making any efforts to return the children following their deportation, which is a direct contravening of the Geneva Convention.

Svitolina told The Independent, “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.”

2023 saw Svitolina defeat world number one Iga Swiatek in the Wimbledon quarter-finals, just eight months after giving birth to her daughter.

Following her monumental efforts in the quarter-final, Svitolina told reporters, “I think war made me stronger and also made me mentally stronger. I think having a child, and war, made me a different person. I look at things a bit differently.”

Per Save Ukraine, 373 children have been returned from the camps, with many suffering signs of trauma. Most recently, nine children were returned in a deal between Ukraine and Russia that had been brokered by Qatar, per The Independent.

Want to see more like this? Follow us here for daily sports news, profiles and analysis!