The Ukrainian tennis player who picked up arms to defend his country

A month after Ukrainian tennis star Sergiy Stakhovsky announced his retirement from professional tennis, he was on vacation in Dubai with his wife and three children. It should have been a celebratory occasion, a break from Budapest where they had settled. Then, he received phone calls from his friends, who told him that Russia had invaded Ukraine.

Two days later, Stakhovsky flew back to Hungary and took a train to Kyiv, leaving his family behind while he played his part in fighting for his country. He immediately joined the territorial defences of Kyiv. “It was my conscious decision to return to Ukraine and fight for my homeland,” the 38-year-old said. 

Ukrainian sports stars can become controversial figures depending on their stance on the decade-long conflict with Russia when Moscow invaded the eastern Donbas. But the former tennis player, who participated in the 2012 London Olympics and is a household name in Ukraine but only ranked as high as 31 in the world, has always been staunchly patriotic.

He later served in a mortar platoon in easter Bakhmut, which saw fierce battles play out for nearly a year until Ukrainian forces retreated in May 2023 in a huge loss for Kyiv. “Imagine walking into a dilapidated school and seeing children’s clothes in the changing rooms. In the classrooms, some of the blackboards had (written) on them ‘Test on 23 February’,” he said in an interview with Context, a date that refers to the day before Moscow’s troops invaded.

“At this point, you start to realise that time has stopped here,” he added. “But it has stopped not because of some cataclysmic event, but because crazy neighbours decided that they wanted to fight.”

In 2014, after Russia invaded Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, Stakhovsky refused to talk to Russian journalists because of what he described as their disinformation on the conflict.

This year, Stakhovsky has fought against Russian troops in Avdiivka where protracted fighting lasted from the start of the full-scale war until February 2024, when the Ukrainian Armed Forces withdrew in what was a bitter loss for Kyiv. 

“Unfortunately, they levelled Avdiivka to the ground with aerial bombs,” he said. “You could feel the vibrations of the explosion even without being in the epicentre or even near it.”

Stakhovsky points out that large parts of the 1.000-kilometer frontline today – including his unit’s current deployment – are critically short of military hardware and artillery to defend themselves. He criticises the West for its sometimes sluggish approval of military aid.

“If we are not given weapons, it does not mean that we will surrender and the war will end. There have always been challenges and there will be challenges as long as this war continues,” he said. “The longer this drags on, the more Ukrainians will lose their lives defending their country.”

The former tennis player noted that Russian society enjoys broad support for the war and that Moscow has a greater capacity to mobilise troops than Ukraine. “They mobilise people who, after watching television, get inspired by the idea of killing Ukrainians,” he said. “It’s just 140 million people who want us dead.”

As the war drags into its third year, Russia has gradually gained ground, and missile and drone attacks continue to hit regions that otherwise see no fighting, and much of the Ukrainian population is experiencing stress and fatigue.

“Of course, there is fatigue. It’s hard to see the fallen heroes all the time. It’s hard to hold back the hatred. Imagine not seeing your family at all or seeing them only a few days in six months,” he said.   

With Russian President Vladimir Putin winning a highly orchestrated sixth term to extend his rule to at least 30 years, Stakhovsky believes that the Russian leader’s crosshairs could target other European countries if Ukraine falls. “Ukraine is just the beginning. If Europe allows Ukraine to fall, they will be next.”

“I think the war will continue even when Putin dies because it is not Putin’s war. This is a war of their people against ours,” he added. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s Putin or someone else, because their ideology is based on hatred of us.”