Elina Svitolina has attempted to clarify her and Gael Monfils’ initial statement regarding her decision to end their marriage. Their first statement on the subject drew fierce backlash against Svitolina, as the majority of tennis fans criticized her while empathizing with Monfils.

Initially, in the joint statement, the Ukrainian WTA star had claimed that the ongoing war in her home country had taken a toll on her and she needed to rediscover herself outside of her marriage to the retired French ATP icon. While she laid bare her love for Monfils as well as their daughter Skai in the statement, most critics wondered how she made the decision to separate from the Frenchman based on a military conflict for which he is not at all responsible.

On Tuesday, October 20, Svitolina once again took to her Instagram, and this time, she claimed that the war was only one of the reasons behind her decision to end the marriage. The current World No. 6 in the WTA’s singles rankings wrote:

“In that post, I shared only one of the reasons that influenced my decision and made me reflect on my life and my future. But the truth is, there’s so much more to it, and it was never just about one thing.”

She went on to elaborate on the impact the ongoing war in Ukraine has had on her and how she has come to the realization that she is not happy in her life, adding:

“When you’ve been living through the reality of war for more than 4.5 years, experiencing so many different situations, emotions, and difficult moments, you naturally start seeing life differently. Your perspective changes, your values and priorities shift, and you begin to understand what you truly want out of life. At some point, I simply realized that I didn’t want to keep living a life where I wasn’t truly happy. And believe me, coming to this decision was anything but easy.”

Elina Svitolina admits Gael Monfils chose to end his career after her decision to end marriage

On the back of Svitolina’s initial statement, a L’Equipe report claimed that Monfils’ choice to retire earlier than expected boiled down to the Ukrainian telling him about her decision to pull the curtains down on their marriage. In her more recent statement, Svitolina confirmed this to be the truth after once again laying bare the love she has for Monfils, continuing:

“It’s not always possible to explain everything behind such personal and difficult decisions in a single post. And honestly, some things are simply too personal to share publicly. That was and is my view on announcing the end of our marriage but as some of you saw, Gael’s career ended abruptly after he made the decision to stop based on our situation. Unfortunately he had many accusations thrown at him and he didn’t deserve that, so we jointly released a statement.”

Urging people to be understanding of her and Monfils’ situation, Svitolina concluded:

“I just hope this helps you understand a little better what I was trying to say but please be kind and understanding, this is incredibly tough for us both right now 💔”

Monfils was expected to play the ATP events in Lyon and Paris before hanging up his racket for good. However, the fact that he is officially listed as retired by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) means that his playing career is over. Meanwhile, Svitolina most recently played at the WTA 1000 event in Wuhan and has sealed her spot at the year-end WTA Finals.