Elina Svitolina posted the statement on Monday and pointed to a wound few outside tennis have seen: The daily weight of her country’s war on her inner life.
“Everyone knows how much Ukraine means to me. What I have rarely spoken about is what the war has done to me inside,” the world No. 6 wrote on Instagram.
She described sleepless nights, doubts and a slow sense of losing herself. The recovery, she said, was not something another person could do for her.
“Some battles happen deep inside you, and no amount of love from someone else can win them for you,” she wrote, calling the decision “the hardest truth I have ever had to face.”
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“I need to find my way back to myself and that I cannot do that within our marriage.”
‘He never let go of my hand’
Svitolina thanked Gaël Monfils and framed the five years that followed their 2021 wedding in Geneva as a shared fight.
“Gaël saw all of it. He never let go of my hand. We fought through this together for a long time,” she wrote.
Their daughter Skai was born in October 2022.
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“Skai will always come first. Our marriage is ending, but our family is not.”
She asked that the post not be read as blame.
“There is no one to blame here. There are only two people who loved each other deeply and a story that is changing shape.”
Monfils retired two weeks earlier
About two weeks after Monfils, 40, quietly left tennis, the announcement arrived. The Frenchman had planned to end his 22-year career at the Rolex Paris Masters in front of a home crowd. Instead, the International Tennis Integrity Agency listed him as retired on 5 October, after a second-round US Open defeat to American teenager Learner Tien, 6-3 6-4 6-3, had turned out to be his final professional match.
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Svitolina spent part of 2025 away from the court for the same reason she gave on Monday.
“Last year, I told you I needed to step away from the court because I wasn’t in the right emotional space,” she wrote.
She returned strongly this season. She reached the Wuhan Open quarter-finals this month before losing to Britain’s Sonay Kartal, and she has qualified for the WTA Finals for the first time since 2019, becoming the first mother to make the season-ending tournament since Kim Clijsters in 2010.
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