Elina Svitolina elaborates on her decision not to shake hands with Victoria Azarenka during Wimbledon to honor Ukrainian forces

Elina Svitolina has yet again given her reasons to why she had decided not to shake hands with Victoria Azarenka following their matchup.

Elina Svitolina elaborates on her decision not to shake hands with Victoria Azarenka during Wimbledon to honor Ukrainian forces

Elina Svitolina denying a handshake after her match. (Credits: Daily Mail)

Wimbledon semi-finalist and one of the headliners of the tournament, Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina has followed up back on an incident that brought in a lot of controversies. In her match against Victoria Azarenka at the round of 16 matchup, the crowd was well stacked up with several people already looking to it as a Ukraine-Russian showdown. Svitolina beat the Belarussian in a three-set thrilling encounter, but it was the after-match incident that drew all the fuss.

Azarenka asked Svitolina if she wanted to shake hands after the match, to which the Ukrainian instantly denied. After one week since the commencement of the competition, Svitolina has given her take on her decision to not shake hands with Azarenka.

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She said, “For me, it is very sad, and very frustrating that people don’t understand this. It’s a very obvious thing to not shake hands when I have a lot of friends who are on the front line, right now, fighting for Ukraine.”

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She added, “Can you imagine them watching me competing at Wimbledon or any anywhere in the world, shaking hands and acting like nothing’s happening? People need to understand that sometimes you can’t divide politics from sport. They are representing their countries and I am representing mine in front of the world. My position has to be clear.”

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Will Elina Svitolina continue to be the aggressive force in the upcoming tournaments?

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Elina Svitolina after winning a match at the Wimbledon Championships. (credits: Washington Post)

Elina Svitolina has taken the tennis world by storm after her brilliant performance at the Wimbledon Championships. She was an unseeded player at the start of the tournament and now she has jumped up to the No. 27 in the WTA rankings. Nobody would have expected her to be in the position she is at the moment, after all, that she has been through in the last couple of months.

Be it her battle with depression caused by the Russia-Ukraine war or her absence from the court due to her childbirth, she has been an absolute fighter. She was once a regular at the semis and quarters of the Grand Slam but after a year of absence, not many expected her to return to her best so soon. She will now be determined to get back to the top 10 as she was once during the years 2017, 2018, and 2019 and go on to win her first-ever Grand Slam title as well.

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