Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk has openly criticized Russian players behavior on the tennis circuit since the countries invasion of Ukraine, saying it ”disgusts” her.

The World number 54 was speaking at her post match press conference following an opening round win against Belgium’s Maryna Zanevska in Indian Wells. Marta Kostyuk claimed that the Russian players were more concerned with money transfers than current world events, ”No one has told me that they regret what their country is doing to mine, nor have they apologized to me or with other Ukrainian tennis players. I have no explanation why the Russians behave like this. It disgusts me to get to the court and see that their only problem right now is not being able to make money transfers and the outrageous thing is that they talk about it.”

The 19 year old then added, ”One player messaged me, another chatted with me, but I didn’t hear any apologies. You don’t have to be involved in politics to behave like a human being. Everyone knows what’s going on. It hurts every time I hit the court and I see all these Russian players. Their only problem right now is not being able to transfer money. It’s unacceptable.”

She went on to discuss further statements made by the Russian players surrounding the invasion, “You cannot be neutral in this situation. ‘No to war’ can mean several things. For example, we (Ukraine) could end the war by surrendering. But that was never an option.”

”From day one I knew it would not happen because I had lived through the revolution and I knew that people would not want to integrate into Russia. What do they want? Do they want Ukraine to lose? Russia to win? Russia to lose? I will say it a hundred times: Ukraine will never give up. We can lose though I don’t think so but Ukraine will never surrender.”

”So ‘No war’ to me means wanting Ukraine to surrender because Putin will never stop, the whole world knows how crazy he is. So we fight. And these press releases hurt me because they don’t make sense.”

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