Elina Svitolina has announced the end of her five-year marriage to fellow tennis star Gaël Monfils, attributing the decision to the emotional and mental impact of Russia’s war in her native Ukraine.
Svitolina, 32, said in a statement posted on both players’ Instagram profiles on Monday that she had endured sleepless nights, doubts and a feeling of losing herself, even with Monfils’ support, before coming to the conclusion that she could not rediscover herself within their marriage.
“Gaël saw all of it,” she wrote. “He never let go of my hand. We fought through this together for a long time, with everything we had. But some battles happen deep inside you, and no amount of love from someone else can win them for you.
“With time, I came to understand that I need to find my way back to myself and that I cannot do that within our marriage.”
Svitolina’s announcement comes a year after she ended her 2025 season early, saying she was not in the right emotional state to compete following Ukraine’s Billie Jean King Cup semifinal defeat by Italy. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Svitolina has spoken repeatedly about fearing for family and friends at home while competing overseas.
Her foundation has raised over $1 million for young people affected by the war, which is estimated to have killed over 150,000 Ukrainian soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians. She is also an ambassador for the government-backed United24 fundraising platform.
Like her compatriots on the WTA Tour, Svitolina has refused post-match handshakes with Russian and Belarusian opponents since 2022.
“Everyone knows how much Ukraine means to me. What I have rarely spoken about is what the war has done to me inside,” Svitolina wrote.
Svitolina said Monfils, 40, had supported her through her difficulties but respected her decision to leave the relationship and that they had tried to work through them together. The pair began their relationship in 2018, married in Switzerland in July 2021, and they have a daughter, Skai, born the following year.
“Skai will always come first. Our marriage is ending, but our family is not,” she wrote. “We will always be her parents, side by side, at every step of her life.”
The couple had played competitive doubles together for the first time just two months ago, reaching the US Open mixed doubles semi-finals in August after defeating the world’s top-ranked doubles players, Katerina Siniakova and Henry Patten, in the quarter-finals.
In September 2025, Svitolina withdrew from the rest of the season days after Ukraine lost its Billie Jean King Cup semi-final to Italy and her defeat to Jasmine Paolini, despite winning the opening set, sent the tie to a deciding doubles match, which Italy won.
During an interview at the Australian Open the following January, Monfils also discussed Svitolina’s decision to take time off, explaining that he and her family had supported her choice to stop playing rather than continue while exhausted.
Svitolina returned to competition in January and immediately won the Auckland Classic. She then reached her first Australian Open semifinal, before collecting the 20th WTA singles title of her career at the Italian Open in May, beating Coco Gauff in the final. On Saturday, she qualified for this year’s WTA Tour Finals, the season-ending championship for the top eight singles players of the year, for the first time since 2019.
At the French Open in May, she discussed the fear experienced by Ukrainian players after Marta Kostyuk said a missile had struck close to her family’s home in Kyiv.
“You start to think about your life and what are you doing here, in a way, because you could potentially lose your family,” Svitolina said at a news conference.
The issue has repeatedly surfaced on court, with Ukrainian players facing opponents from Russia and Belarus, who have been allowed to compete individually without national representation. Wimbledon excluded Russian and Belarusian players in 2022 but allowed them to return the following year, while Svitolina and other Ukrainians have continued to decline post-match handshakes with players from those countries.
Monfils, the former world No. 6, had intended to retire at the end of 2026 and had been expected to say farewell at the Paris Masters in November, but the International Tennis Integrity Agency now lists him as retired from October 5. He had been set to play as a wild card at an ATP 250 event in Lyon this week, but last week the tournament said the 40-year-old had withdrawn for personal reasons.
Svitolina said neither she nor Monfils was to blame for their separation.
“There are only two people who loved each other deeply and a story that is changing shape,” she wrote. “We ask for your kindness and for the space we need to heal.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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