Ukrainian tennis player speaks out about crisis at BNP

The Ukrainian crisis is on the minds of some of the players at the BNP Parbibas Open. At the Tennis Gardens in Indian Wells, players from all over the world try to leave behind politics to play the game they love, but one player feels he has no choice but to speak out.

Sergiy Stakhovsky played tennis professionally for over ten years, but he’s been a Ukrainian his whole life.

“It’s the first time that I stepped over the line to do any political statements in my career, but unfortunately the time is that none of the citizens of Ukraine is capable of staying out of it,” said Stakhovsky.

This week he put down his racket and picked up a pen, writing an open letter on Sports Illustrated’s website. Click here to read it.

“I wrote pretty clear what my feelings are in the article,” said Stakhovsky.

It is as poetic as it is brutally honest, describing in detail how corrupt he believes the government had become.

“In Ukraine it doesn’t matter how you vote, it matters who is counting,” said Stakhovsky.

Stakhovsky says he wants the voices of Ukrainians heard.

“We don’t want any war going on and we want Russian troops out of Crimea, that is what we want, we want our peace,” said Stakhovsky.

The 28-year-old still has family in Keiv and is finding it hard to focus on tennis.

“It’s never easy, whenever you open the internet, any source, everything is popping up on you and you start to read and you are losing hours reading articles from different sites, different sources this happened, that and it’s too much information and unfortunately you can’t stop yourself because you want to know what is going on,” said Stakhovsky.

But he is getting support from his fellow players even the ones from Russia.

“The sport is the thing that unites us, I’m talking here to Russian guys frequently and normally because I’ve known them for years.

While Stakhovsky gets ready for his next match he is trying to stay optimistic.

“That is the only thing that I can do actually, I try to but it’s not very easy,” said Stakhovsky.