For three years, the United States has been something of a haven for tennis players from Ukraine.

Then came the past two weeks. President Donald Trump and his top diplomats have been pushing Ukraine to give up some of its mineral resources, in exchange for their continued support in its war with Russia. Humanitarian assistance from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been in jeopardy since Trump directed Elon Musk, an unelected “special government employee”, and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is named for an internet meme featuring a dog, to shut down the agency.

Days before Indian Wells and the Miami Open, the two biggest tennis tournaments of the year on American soil outside of the U.S. Open, the fortnight of tension exploded in front of television cameras in the Oval Office. Friday, Trump and Vice-President J.D. Vance berated Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, for a lack of gratitude for America’s support. In an extraordinary break between two allies, Trump lectured Zelensky on his weak position in negotiations and in the war. “You don’t have the cards,” Trump said. “You’re either going to make a deal, or we’re out.”

Ukraine’s tennis players will now travel to the U.S. for the so-called “Sunshine Double” under a cloud, entering a country with a different kind of government to the one they have been visiting since Russia, with assistance from Belarus, invaded Ukraine just over three years ago.

“The United States has been helping us for a long period of time now,” Elina Svitolina, the most decorated active Ukrainian player across men’s and women’s tennis, said in an interview from her home in Monaco last week. “Our government is working really hard to still find the ways, the solutions for the decisions. They’re trying everything and to maybe find other ways, other allies, or something. We are just hoping for the best.”

The U.S. has given Ukraine more aid than any other country. The Department of Defense says it has spent over $180billion (£143bn) on Operation Atlantic Resolve, the response to Russia’s invasion. But for Svitolina and her compatriots, the next month will be one of the first of 36 in which they will have to contemplate what a country truly thinks about theirs while standing on its tennis courts.

Svitolina, 30, is one of four Ukrainians in the WTA Tour top 100 (the highest-ranked men’s player is Oleksandr Ovcharenko, world No. 307.) The top-ranked Ukrainian is Marta Kostyuk, at No. 19; Svitolina is No. 24. For Svitolina, Kostyuk, Dayana Yastremska (No. 44) and Anhelina Kalinina (No. 52), the recent weeks have been especially tough. Some of them have lobbied the leaders of tennis — the WTA, the ATP, and the International Tennis Federation (ITF) — to prohibit players from Russia and Belarus who have shown loyalty to Putin and to Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, from competing in their tournaments.

That has not happened since 2022, when the British tennis governing body banned players from Russia and Belarus from playing at Wimbledon and the other grass-court tournaments in the United Kingdom just over a month after the four Grand Slams, WTA, ATP and ITF had issued a joint statement condemning Russia’s invasion. Players including Martina Navratilova, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal criticized the ban, and the ATP and WTA responded by stripping Wimbledon of its ranking points. The Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) rescinded its ban for 2023.

The ATP, WTA and four Grand Slams have since allowed Russians and Belarusians to compete as neutral athletes; the ITF has excluded them from international team competitions like the Davis Cup (men’s) and Billie Jean King Cup (women’s). Officials at all three governing organizations, which have not taken a stance on any other conflict since, said they have no plans to change those policies. The situation remains tense.

There are 14 Russians and Belarusians in the WTA top 100, including world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka and world No. 9 Mirra Andreeva. There are four Russians in the ATP top 100, two — Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev — are in the top 10. The empty space next to their names where their peers have their national flags is one of the remaining visible signs of the conflict on the tennis tours, along with the absence of any events in those countries. When Sabalenka received the runners-up trophy at the Australian Open in January, there was no Belarusian flag next to the American one for the winner, Madison Keys.

Players from Ukraine have not shaken hands with players from Russia or Belarus for three years, and with few exceptions, they do not speak with one another at tournaments. When Medvedev received a code violation for unsportsmanlike conduct during a match in Dubai Thursday, he asked the chair umpire, Adel Nour, if he had penalized him because of “double standards against Russians.” Medvedev left the court after his defeat to Tallon Griekspoor of the Netherlands without shaking Nour’s hand, but said he later apologized to the umpire.

Last weekend, on the third anniversary of the Russian invasion, Andreeva and Rublev won the top tournament on their respective tours. Rublev wrote ‘No War Please’ on a camera lens after reaching the final of a tournament in Dubai, the day after Russia’s invasion. Andreeva, who with Diana Shnaider won the silver medal in women’s doubles at the Paris Olympics, was asked at the Australian Open about competing under her flag. “I would say that there is nothing I can do. It doesn’t depend on me. Whatever happens happens,” she said. Andreeva and Shnaider competed as Individual Neutral Athletes (AIN) at the Paris Games, wearing white.

Elina Svitolina lost to eventual champion Madison Keys at this year’s Australian Open in Melbourne. (Graham Denholm / Getty Images)

Early last month, Svitolina travelled to Ukraine, to hold meetings for her eponymous foundation and conduct a day-long sports and mental health support clinic for children from all over the country in Vinnytsia, a small city roughly 200 miles southwest of the capital, Kyiv. Svitolina and her close friend and compatriot Sergei Stakhovsky, who retired from tennis to join Ukraine’s army, spent six hours on the court with roughly 300 children.

That is no easy feat. Because of the war, traveling to Kyiv requires a 14-hour journey from Monaco. First a flight to Poland, then a long train or car ride. She said it’s possible that she gets as much out of it as the children do.

“This small moment that they have the smiles, the laughs, this really brightens their days, and that’s what I want to share with them,” Svitolina said.

“I want to bring them this small hope for a better future.”

Svitolina’s parents stay with her and her husband, ATP professional Gael Monfils, and their daughter, Skaï, often in Monaco. But her 86-year-old grandmother, Tamara, and an uncle remain in Odessa, the southern port city still targeted by Russian missile attacks as night falls.

She wishes her grandmother would spend more time in bomb shelters, but she is elderly and prefers to stay home in her apartment. Svitolina said her grandmother has promised her that when the missiles start, she will follow the protocols and stand away from windows and between two walls to lessen the chances that shattered glass will hit her if a strike lands nearby.

They speak nearly every day, either through text message or preferably by phone or FaceTime, so her grandmother can see Skaï. Svitolina tries to time these calls for the evening, when her work for the day is behind her. But sometimes the time difference doesn’t allow for that and she has to reach out in the morning, or from the grounds of a tournament.

It’s not really an ideal way to prepare to play a tennis match, but Svitolina still made the quarterfinals of the Australian Open. She went 2-2 during the most recent tournaments in Doha, Qatar and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, as the situation between Ukraine and the U.S. began to deteriorate. She now heads to the California desert for the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells. In 2022, she exited the event wearing the yellow and blue of her country’s flag, 12 days after tennis’ governing bodies condemned the invasion of her country.

Following Trump and Zelensky’s meeting in Washington, D.C., messages of support came in on social media from numerous political leaders in Europe.

“We are living with the unimaginable challenges, pressure, and just not knowing what’s coming tomorrow,” Svitolina said.

“Right now, I feel like we are united even more because we feel like the United States is not helping us much for the past few weeks.

“So we have to unite, we have to help each other, for the country that we love. Trump just started and already made a lot of decisions that really hurt the Ukrainians. I’m just really sad for all innocent people.”

(Top photo of Elina Svitolina at Indian Wells: Marcio Jose Sanchez / Associated Press)