Oleksandra Oliynykova turned her French Open defeat into a public challenge to tennis authorities, calling for sanctions against Diana Shnaider after losing 7-5, 6-1. The Ukrainian accused the sport’s governing bodies of hypocrisy and said they already had the power to act if they chose to use it.
The reason the dispute landed so hard is that Oliynykova tied her demand to what she said Shnaider did last year in St Petersburg: play at the Northern Palmyra Trophies exhibition, which was sponsored by Gazprom, while also appearing to like pro-Vladimir Putin posts on Instagram. She showed journalists images of Shnaider at the event and screenshots of the social media activity, arguing the case was too serious for tennis to ignore.
Oliynykova opened her press conference by reading a statement that made the personal cost of the war plain. She said she is still living and training in Kyiv, while her father, Denis Oliynyk, and her boyfriend are both volunteers for the Ukrainian army. That made her criticism of Shnaider sharper, because she framed the issue not as a debate about sporting neutrality but as a question of whether tennis is willing to overlook conduct linked to Russia’s invasion.
Shnaider pushed back by saying she had not seen Oliynykova’s comments or press conferences. She said the exhibition tournament was a rare chance to play in front of her family and friends, and to spend a little more time at home after travelling all year. On the social media accusations, she said she had no idea what Oliynykova had found and had no comment.
Oliynykova rejected that distinction. She said the Gazprom-backed tournament was financing war crimes and camps for children, and told reporters she saw no difference between playing there and competing in Nazi Germany for Gestapo officers or in a tournament organised by the company that built Auschwitz. Her demand was aimed not only at Shnaider but at the system around her, which she said already sanctions players for entering events backed by betting companies.
The clash has put a Grand Slam match into a wider argument over how tennis should treat Russian players linked to state-backed events during five years of conflict in Ukraine. Oliynykova has become one of the tour’s most outspoken players on the war since breaking into the top 100 at the end of last year, and she said silence would be impossible for her. What happens next now depends on whether the tour follows the mechanism Oliynykova says already exists — or leaves the accusation hanging without action.
