Belarusia’s Aryna Sabalenka looked visibly distraught when addressing the Russia-Ukraine war in Netflix’s tennis documentary Break Point.
After Russia invaded Ukraine and Belarus backed Russia’s actions, Sabalenka suggested that she noticed some were looking “weird” at her.
On June 21st, the second season of Break Point is being released on Netflix.
“I’m from Belarus so I felt really bad. It’s tough. It’s really tough what they’re dealing with. If I could have any control of it, then of course, I would do everything I can to stop everything. Everyone started talking about, ‘You have to ban all the players from Russia and Belarus’ and I thought that everyone is looking weird to me, you know? I felt like everyone hates me because of my country,” Sabalenka said in Break Point, via Express-Sport.
Sabalenka coach: Say something negative about Belarus, you die in jail
Anton Dubrov, Sabalenka’s coach who is a Belarusian, suggested that publicly condemning their country could result in “dying in jail.”
“But also you have to be really careful because in our country you cannot say a word about what is going on. Or if you just say the word ‘war’. Like, ‘Okay, you will die in jail.’ So it’s very difficult. It was kind of this pressure around, like, ‘You have to talk’ but also there is no right words for you,” Dubrov said.
For a year, Sabalenka was repeating that she was “for peace all over the world.”
But at the French Open, a Ukrainian journalist twice confronted Sabalenka and asked the Belarusian about her views on the war and Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko.
After skipping two press conferences due to feeling “unsafe,” Sabalenka returned to the press room six days later and made her position clear.
“I don’t support war, meaning I don’t support Lukashenko right now,” Sabalenka said after her French Open quarterfinal win over Elina Svitolina.
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