‘I don’t respect her’: Kostyuk hits out at Sabalenka and French Open crowd

Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk believes the French Open crowd should be embarrassed after they booed her off court at Roland Garros when she refused to shake hands with Aryna Sabalenka following the Belarusian’s 6-3, 6-2 win.
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‘I want to see people react in 10 years, when the war is over. They will not feel really nice about what they did.’

Kostyuk added that she ‘does not respect’ Sabalenka and accused the world No 2 of not using her platform to speak out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is supported by Belarus. ‘Just to reject her responsibility of having an opinion on the most important things in the world – I can’t respect that’.

Sabalenka responded to Kostyuk’s comments, saying ‘I said many times, nobody – Russian or Belarusian athletes – support the war. Of course we don’t support war. If we could stop it, we would – but it’s not in our hands’.

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