Only Roland Garros towel left, says Ukraine tennis player after Russian strike hits flat

Ukrainian tennis player Dayana Yastremska has said her family’s flat has been destroyed in a Russian aerial strike on the Black Sea port of Odesa.

“This is what the ‘Russian world’ looks like. A direct hit by a Kalibr cruise missile,” she wrote on social media, showing a photo of a burning multi-storey residential building.

“The only thing that survived was a Roland Garros… towel,” the 26-year-old added, posting an image of a famous clay orange towel from Paris’s Grand Slam tournament hanging from the wreckage.

Odesa regional head Oleh Kiper said 37 people were injured, including a baby, and two missing in the missile and drone attack on Odesa and nearby Chornomorsk on Friday night.

“A Russian missile destroyed our apartment in Odesa… SYMBOLIC. A piece of world tennis survived a Russian missile. Our home did not,” Yastremska wrote on Instagram on Saturday.

“@wta @itf_reviews Look at these images through our eyes,” she said in a reference to the governing bodies of world tennis – the Women’s Tennis Association and the International Tennis Federation.

Yastremska – who in 2024 reached the semifinal stage of the Australian Open – is currently 113th in the women’s world singles rankings.

It is not the first time Ukrainian athletes’ homes have been hit by Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Last year, Ukraine international football midfielder Heorhiy Sudakov said his flat in the capital Kyiv had been severely damaged by a Russian drone while his wife and child were at home.