Russian Invasion of Ukraine (2022)

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      When Your Champions League Dream Runs Through a War Zone

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      Shakhtar Donetsk’s foreign stars fled Ukraine when Russia invaded. Now some are returning or signing up, proof that the lure of opportunity can trump fear.By the time Lassina Traoré returned to his team, everybody else was gone.In 2021, Traoré, a forward from Burkina Faso, had joined the other expensive foreign recruits lured to Ukraine by the country’s perennial soccer champion, Shakhtar Donetsk. Back then, Traoré played in a team built around a Brazilian core, supplemented by other foreign talent and some of Ukrainian soccer’s best players, for a club that was regarded as arguably the top team in Eastern Europe. Then the Russian bombs began to fall, and everything changed.When Shakhtar returned to practice after a monthslong hiatus abroad, the cosmopolitan air of the club had vanished. A roster that had been dotted with almost a dozen Brazilians just over a year ago now contains only one. Clubs elsewhere in Europe, shopping for bargains amid broken contracts, skimmed off other talent. Even Roberto de Zerbi, Shakhtar’s highly rated Italian coach, had moved on.Traoré, like all the others, could have gone, too. FIFA, soccer’s governing body, issued an edict shortly after the start of the war that allowed foreigners, whatever their contractual status, to unilaterally quit Ukrainian teams and sign elsewhere.Traoré was vacationing in Barcelona on the day Russia invaded Ukraine. He could only follow from afar as Shakhtar’s foreign stars — crammed in a hotel conference room with their families — pleaded for help as war planes circled the skies above Kyiv. Within a few days, they had left the country. Those who escaped did not return.Traoré returned to Amsterdam, where he had previously played for the Dutch club Ajax, to wait out the early months of the war. While the rest of Shakhtar’s armada of foreign talent found new clubs — some back home in Brazil, others in Europe — Traoré took his time. Slowly, the thought of returning to Shakhtar started to look like not only a viable option but the right thing to do.“I had many options,” he said after a recent practice in Kyiv, where the team has been based for the last few weeks. “The club knows. I know. And we discussed it. But I decided to stay.”For him, he said, “it’s in my culture that when they give you something, you have to give something back. For me, it was time to give back the love they gave me before.”Traoré said that he understood why many of his teammates decided not to return. He admitted that he had some difficult conversations with his wife and parents before agreeing to do so. (His wife is now living with his parents at their home in Paris.)For most of the season the team lived in a hotel complex in the western city of Lviv, but it has recently moved to Kyiv, closer to its training ground. A return to Donetsk, in the east, is out of the question; Russian forces have controlled the city since last year, joining separatists that forced Shakhtar into exile as long ago as 2014.The club Traoré has rejoined is a shadow of the powerhouse it once was. The squad and its finances have been gutted; Shakhtar estimates that it has lost at least $40 million worth of talent for nothing as a result of FIFA’s decision to let players walk away from their contracts.Shakhtar and rivals like Dynamo Kyiv play their league matches in empty stadiums. Shakhtar remains on course for a return to the Champions League next season.Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters“We have no money,” the club’s chief executive, Sergei Palkin, said on a recent visit to London. The Ukrainian league’s return, as much a symbol of the country’s resolve as a sporting competition, is played out in front of empty stands and to the sound of occasional air raid sirens forcing players from the field. The league’s television contract has collapsed. Sponsors have all but disappeared.“We have no income from Ukraine,” Palkin said. “Zero.”What money there is has come from Shakhtar’s presence in the Champions League and the Europa League, European soccer’s second-tier competition, and from the record transfer fee the club received by selling its star Ukrainian forward Mykhailo Mudruyk to Chelsea in England.New money cannot come soon enough. While FIFA allowed foreign players to leave Shakhtar without a fee, it insisted the club pay any debts to the clubs it signed those foreign players from, including a handful that did not play a single minute for the club because of the war, according to Palkin.Traoré’s decision to return, then, came as a pleasant surprise. He had cost the club $10 million in a transfer fee when he joined from Ajax in 2021. A forward who was not considered a mainstay before the war, he is suddenly a pivotal figure, and not just for what he is doing on the field.His continued presence, Traoré and the club hope, is a sign to potential recruits that soccer in Ukraine remains a viable career option. It is an option that proved alluring to players with European dreams like Kevin Kelsy, an 18-year-old striker from Venezuela.The 18-year-old Venezuelan striker Kevin Kelsy said his family was worried about his move to Shakhtar. “When I told them, they asked, ‘Why Ukraine?’” Yoan Valat/EPA, via ShutterstockNot so long ago Kelsy would not have been a target for Shakhtar, which for years used the wealth of its oligarch owner to shop at a higher price bracket. But now, in its more straitened state, Shakhtar has turned to eager young players like Kelsy and recruits from Georgia and Tajikistan.Kelsy said signing a five-year contract with a club in a country at war was a surprisingly easy decision. The prospect of fulfilling a dream of making it to Europe trumped everything else, he said — even the persistent threat from Russian missiles and planes, the regular drone of air raid sirens and the rumble of distant explosions. His family, though, had questions.“When I told them, they asked, ‘Why Ukraine?’” he said in an interview in Spanish. “They knew everything that happened, and there was a little bit of nervousness and a little of fear. But I spoke to them about this theme, that it’s very important for me to go to play football in Europe, in a big team like Shakhtar, and in the end they understood.”Kelsy, like the scores of South Americans who have signed for Ukrainian clubs in the past, views the club as a steppingstone on a journey that he hopes might one day propel him to the club of his dreams, A.C. Milan. Games in elite competitions like the Champions League, he knows, offer an elite stage to show he belongs. (Shakhtar, which led the Ukrainian league entering the weekend, is on track to return to the competition next season.)Having lost so many players, Palkin, the Shakhtar chief executive, now insists that any new recruits sign contracts that include clauses that would prevent them from taking advantage of any FIFA regulations that would allow them to suddenly leave. Any player who signs on now, he said, surely understands the commitment they are making.So strong is the pull of making it as a professional in Europe, though, that Kelsy said not even war could stop him from coming. “I try not to think about it,” he said, “and focus on what matters now.”As a new recruit, Kelsy knows no other reality as a Shakhtar player. That is not the case for Traoré, who recalls far more luxurious times. In those days, jet travel and big crowds were the norm, not the long, arduous bus journeys that are now required to fulfill fixtures in empty stadiums.“It’s not normal life like we used to have: no home, you can’t see family, and also you have to always be careful, sirens on all the time,” he said. “But you get used to it.” More

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      Diana Shnaider Is Mixing College Tennis With the Pro Tour, for Now

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      A freshman at North Carolina State, Shnaider, a Russian, is the first woman ranked in the top 100 of the pro game to play college tennis since 1993.Last August, Diana Shnaider, a teenage tennis player from Russia, was traveling solo in Europe with a world-class forehand but no working bank card because of financial sanctions against her country. She had to pay for hotels, flights and food with cash.Last week, she led the North Carolina State women’s tennis team, which is ranked ninth in Division I, to a victory over second-ranked Ohio State.“Things were bad, but they’re better now,” Shnaider said on Wednesday on a video call from Columbus, Ohio.Shnaider, a left-hander with a flashy and powerful style of play, has found stability in the game, even though many observers never believed she would choose college tennis over playing on the professional tour full time. The skeptics included her college coach, Simon Earnshaw.“I didn’t think she was going to come,” Earnshaw said in a telephone interview. “But she’s kind of unique. As an 18-year-old, she’s still a kid, but she’s very clear on how she sees the game and what’s important to her and what’s not important to her. And, really, the only thing that’s important to her is, ‘How do I get better?’”When she arrived in Raleigh, N.C., last summer, she ranked 249th on the WTA Tour in singles. She is up to 90th after a surge in Australia, where she qualified for her first Grand Slam singles tournament, the Australian Open, and lost in the second round to sixth-seeded Maria Sakkari of Greece, 3-6, 7-5, 6-3.Shnaider has big weapons in her slashing forehand and serve. She has quick feet and an attacking mentality that has been there since she learned the game in Tolyatti, across the Volga River from Zhigulevsk, her hometown. She moved to Moscow at age 9 with her family to find better training opportunities.“I never wanted to be a pusher,” she said. “I was always like: ‘OK, here’s the shot. I’m killing it.’”At the Australian Open, her fist pumps and celebratory shouts rattled Sakkari, who thought they were directed at her. Shnaider said that was a misunderstanding and that she was shouting toward her team in the player’s box on Sakkari’s side of the court.Shnaider said her run in Australia — and the more than $140,000 in prize money that came with it — did not make her rethink her decision to play in college, even if it has been tough for her to read harsh criticism of it on social media.“I understand with my mind that I’m doing everything right, but of course when people say mean things it goes to my heart and soul,” she said. “But I’m trying to just go my own way.”Shnaider, shown at the Australian Open in January, is undefeated in women’s singles at North Carolina State.Joel Carrett/EPA, via ShutterstockShnaider is the first woman ranked in the top 100 in singles to play college tennis since 1993, when the American Lisa Raymond played at Florida. Shnaider has gone undefeated in singles matches this season for N.C. State, which is not a traditional college tennis power. But the Wolfpack are 7-1 and undefeated with Shnaider in the lineup.“She’s the best player to play college tennis in a while, for sure,” said Geoff Macdonald, the former women’s coach at Vanderbilt.The American college game has resumed being a pathway to professional success in recent years with college standouts like Cameron Norrie, Jennifer Brady and Danielle Collins making successful transitions. But what separates Shnaider from them is that she made inroads in the pro game before college. (N.C.A.A. rules allow players to use prize money to cover their documented tennis expenses at any time during that same calendar year, but they must donate any excess to remain eligible.)Shnaider’s decision was partly because of geopolitics: It allowed her to establish a base in the United States while her country is viewed as a pariah in much of the West.“I think 100 percent her being Russian made the difference,” David Secker, an N.C. State assistant coach, said.Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 brought sanctions against Russians. For tennis players, the sanctions complicated travel and training, and raised the possibility of Russian players being excluded from tournaments (to date, Wimbledon has been the only major individual event to do so).Shnaider, who split with her coach in June, wanted to ensure she could keep playing competitively and improve on hardcourts. Her best results had come on clay.“I was really afraid and thinking what will I do sitting in Russia without coach and without matches?” she said.Before committing to N.C. State, she had to overcome her doubts. “I thought it would mean like I’m quitting the tennis, the professional career,” she said.Her father, Maksim, who helped shape her game, was against it. But her mother, Julia, a trained pianist more focused on education, pushed for it and helped make the initial contact with Secker last April through a Russian family in the United States.Secker, like Earnshaw, was skeptical that Shnaider was serious about attending college, but he organized a video call and then met with Shnaider and her mother at the French Open in June. The family remained divided on the issue, however, and Shnaider, when she was back on the road, kept having emotional phone calls with her parents.“I was in the middle of nowhere, and I was like, this is not helping me,” Shnaider said. “And my dad was like, this is your decision, so make your first whole decision by yourself.”It would be N.C. State. Bureaucratic issues made her wait five days in Warsaw for her student visa, and she sprinted down a hall at the U.S. Embassy to collect it before closing time on a Friday. But she made it to the United States a few days before the U.S. Open junior tournament and reached the semifinals of the girls’ event in singles and won in doubles with Lucie Havlickova.But Shnaider remained athletically ineligible. She had signed a contract with Wesport, a management agency in Sweden, and, Earnshaw said, the N.C.A.A. needed to examine the agreement to ensure that any payments she had received were in exchange for the use of her name, image and likeness, which is now permitted by the N.C.A.A.The process took nearly five months to resolve. “It was extremely protracted frustration,” Earnshaw said.Shnaider got clearance on Feb. 3, the day before a home match with Oklahoma. Though she has gone undefeated in singles with the team, she has been pleasantly surprised by the level of play. For example, she had to save a match point before defeating Sydni Ratliff of Ohio State.“I was worried I was going to lose time and lose my motivation,” Shnaider said of playing college tennis. But she noted that has not happened. “I’m getting out of my apartment at 8 a.m., coming back at 8 p.m., and I’m passed out.”She is about to start juggling college tennis and tour tennis, competing at the WTA event in Monterrey, Mexico, where the main draw starts Monday. Then comes the qualifying event at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif. Going deep at either tournament will mean she is likely to miss some college matches.“I would say logistics is the biggest challenge for Diana,” Secker said. “And I also think doubt is a huge part because I think there’s always this doubt that if I’m playing a college match, am I missing out on an opportunity in the pro game? If I’m playing pro, am I letting down my team in some way?”For at least a few more months, Shnaider will try to do justice to both worlds, but the challenge pales in comparison to taking on the satellite circuit last year with no chaperone or modern means of payment. When she won a title in Istanbul, the organizers had to give her the nearly $9,000 in prize money in cash.“I was like, what am I supposed to do with that?” she said holding her right thumb and index finger far apart to show the size of the stack of bank notes. “I was so careful.”At other times, she said, she barely had enough cash to pay for a night’s hotel.“My parents were feeling really insecure for me,” she said. “My mom was like, ‘Don’t carry your passport, don’t go outside, don’t speak Russian, just stay in the hotel.’ Because she just didn’t know what people can do.” More

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      Big Risks and Big Rewards for Aryna Sabalenka at the Australian Open

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      The Belarusian, who beat Elena Rybakina to win her first Grand Slam title on Saturday, held the trophy in triumph while the war in Ukraine remained a brutal reality.MELBOURNE, Australia — It was the sort of outcome that Wimbledon had been intent on avoiding at the All England Club: a Belarusian champion holding up the silverware in triumph with the war in Ukraine still a brutal reality.But Wimbledon, where Belarusian and Russian players were banned in 2022 and may be again this year, has remained an outlier in professional tennis and increasingly in international sports.Aryna Sabalenka, born and raised to pound tennis balls into submission in Minsk, Belarus, was free to play and win the Australian Open women’s singles title as a neutral competitor, even if there was scant chance her victory would be greeted neutrally at home or by her country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, whom she knows personally.“I think everyone still knows I’m a Belarusian player, and that’s it,” Sabalenka said on Saturday night at a news conference, a glass of champagne in hand and the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup glittering beside her.She put her name on the trophy and secured her first Grand Slam women’s singles title with a brilliant and bold performance. Anything less would not have sufficed against Elena Rybakina in their gripping, corner-to-corner final that might have been better suited to a ring as the two six-footers exchanged big blows for two hours and 28 minutes.Mash tennis. Crush tennis. Rip tennis. Smack tennis. Take your pick, but something onomatopoeic seemed appropriate with all that power on display, and what separated this match from many a tennis slugfest was the consistent depth and quality of the punching.High risk was rewarded repeatedly on Saturday as both finalists took big swings, aiming close to the lines and often hitting them.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Coaching That Feels Like ‘Cheating’: In-match coaching has always happened on the sly, but this year is the first time the Australian Open has allowed players to be coached from the stands.Rod Laver Likes What He Sees: At 84 years old, the man with his name on the stadium sits courtside at the Australian Open.India’s Superstar: Sania Mirza, who leaves tennis as a sleeping giant, has been a trailblazer nonetheless. “I would like to have a quieter life,” she said.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Rybakina finished with 31 winners to 25 unforced errors. Sabalenka, in what looked like the finest performance of her career, finished with 51 winners to 28 unforced errors: She cranked up the quality after an erratic opening set and won the lion’s share of the rallies, or maybe the tiger’s share, considering she had the animal tattooed on her left forearm at age 18 to remind her to fight for every point.“My parents didn’t know about this tattoo,” she told the Tennis Channel. “When they saw it the first time, my dad was laughing, I don’t know why, but my mom didn’t talk to me for one week.”Five years later, the tattoo remains but much has changed: Her father, Sergey, died in 2019 at age 43, leaving Sabalenka committed to achieving the dream he had for her to become No. 1.She has already fulfilled his wish in doubles, reaching the top spot in 2021. When the new singles rankings are released on Monday, she will be back at No. 2, behind Iga Swiatek, who still has a large lead based on her terrific 2022 season but who has lost to Sabalenka and Rybakina in the last two significant tournaments.Sabalenka, with the tattoo of a tiger on her left forearm that she got at 18 to remind her to fight for every point.Fazry Ismail/EPA, via ShutterstockSabalenka defeated her in November in the semifinals of the WTA Finals, the season-ending tour championships in Fort Worth. Rybakina overpowered Swiatek in the fourth round in Melbourne on her way to the final.Swiatek, the Polish star who looked set to become a dominant No. 1, is instead struggling to adjust to her new status and facing increased competition at the top, although she remains, until proven otherwise, the best women’s clay-court player.But on other surfaces, Sabalenka and Rybakina, last year’s surprise Wimbledon champion, clearly pose a formidable threat with their aggressive returns, relatively flat groundstrokes and penetrating serves.There were rare variations on Saturday: a drop-shot winner from Rybakina, a few defensive lobs and the occasional off-speed backhand. But for the most part, it was strength versus strength; straight-line power against straight-line power. The spectacle was frequently breathtaking, but you did not have to hold your breath for more than a few seconds: The longest rally was 13 strokes, and the average rally length was just 3.28 strokes.It was tennis reminiscent of the big-serving, high-velocity duels between Serena and Venus Williams. It was also a significant departure from last year’s Australian Open, where Ashleigh Barty ended a 44-year singles drought for the host country by winning the title, putting her court craft and crisply sliced one-handed backhand to work before shocking the tennis world (and Australia) by retiring in March at age 25.But Barty, now married to Garry Kissick and expecting their first child, has hardly avoided the Australian Open, making numerous public appearances this year and walking onto Rod Laver Arena before Saturday’s final with the Akhurst Memorial Cup in hand.“I can honestly look myself in the mirror and say I gave everything to tennis, but it gave me back so much more in return,” she said in a recent interview. “And all that really starts from the people I was surrounded with. So much of my success is our success. It genuinely is.”Sabalenka could relate to that on Saturday as she shared a post-victory moment with her team and then watched from afar as her normally stoic coach, Anton Dubrov, put a white towel to his face and sobbed in the player box.Sabalenka said she had never seen Dubrov cry and explained that last season, in February, as she struggled with the yips on her second serve and her confidence and reached a point where she could not even openly discuss the problem, Dubrov offered his resignation.“There were moments last year when he said, ‘I think I’m done, and I think I cannot give you something else, and you have to find someone else,’” Sabalenka said in an interview with Nine Network. “And I said: ‘No, you’re not right. It’s not about you. We just have to work through these tough moments, and we’ll come back stronger.’”Her performance on Saturday was incontrovertible proof that they had succeeded, with the help of a biomechanical expert but also Sabalenka’s own resilience. She is 11-0 this year and though she double-faulted seven times in the final, including on her first match point, she also repeatedly shrugged off any jitters (and the palpable concern of the big crowd) and came up with aces or service winners on subsequent serves.In the end, she hit 17 aces to Rybakina’s 9.“For sure, it’s not easy mentally,” Rybakina said of Sabalenka. “She didn’t have a great serve last year, but now she was super strong and she served well. For sure, I respect that. I know how much work it takes.”Rybakina has paid her dues, too. Born and raised in Russia, she switched allegiance to Kazakhstan in exchange for financial support in 2018. And though she was allowed to play at Wimbledon last year, her victory, with her strong Russian connections, was not the outcome the tournament was seeking either when it imposed its ban under pressure from the British government.Some Ukrainian players continue to oppose Russians and Belarusians being allowed to compete at all on tour, even as neutrals. The debate is about to intensify as the International Olympic Committee begins to push for Russians and Belarusians to be allowed to compete as independent athletes at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris — a move the Ukrainian government strongly opposes and could respond to by withdrawing its own athletes.But Sabalenka, after sitting out Wimbledon, where she reached the semifinals in 2021, is now a Grand Slam singles champion in Australia and was feted with no apparent ambivalence by the Australian Open tournament director, Craig Tiley, and was awarded her trophy in Rod Laver Arena by Billie Jean King.Sabalenka’s news conference was full of questions intended not to confront her directly but rather to probe the issue. However you present her on the scoreboard, it was a Belarus victory.“Missing the Wimbledon was really tough for me,” she said. “It was a tough moment for me. But I played the U.S. Open after. It’s not about Wimbledon right now. It’s just about the hard work I’ve done.” More

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      Djokovic Is Back in the Australian Open Final

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      Djokovic will play for his 22nd Grand Slam title on Sunday against Stefanos Tsitsipas. Will his father, Srdjan, be in his usual seat in the stands to cheer him on?MELBOURNE, Australia — For Novak Djokovic, everything was going according to plan. Even better than that, by many measures.He had charmed a country that had kicked him out a year ago over his refusal to be vaccinated. The soreness in his hamstring at the beginning of the tournament had all but disappeared, allowing him to look nearly invincible in the crucial second week of the tournament. He appeared on a glide pattern to yet another Australian Open men’s singles title and the 22nd Grand Slam title of his career.And then his father, Srdjan Djokovic troubled the waters.Djokovic, Serbia’s favorite son and most famous citizen, will play for his 10th Australian Open championship on Sunday against Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, but the glide pattern is officially over. He defeated Tommy Paul in straight sets Friday, 7-5, 6-1, 6-2, in front of a hostile crowd that notably did not include his father, who has been at all his other matches during this tournament.Srdjan Djokovic on Thursday appeared in a video with fans outside Rod Laver Arena, some of whom were holding Russian flags, and next to a man wearing a shirt with the “Z” symbol that is viewed as support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite the tournament’s ban on Russian and Belarusian flags.Serbia has close political and cultural ties to Russia, and support for the Russian invasion is significant there, unlike in most of the rest of Europe. The incident made headlines worldwide, sparking the ire of Ukraine’s government and sending both the tournament and Djokovic’s team scrambling to control the damage.Early Friday, Srdjan Djokovic released a statement saying he had been celebrating with his son’s fans on Wednesday night and did not mean to cause an international incident. “My family has lived through the horror of war, and we wish only for peace,” the statement said. “So there is no disruption to tonight’s semifinal for my son or for the other player, I have chosen to watch from home.”The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Coaching That Feels Like ‘Cheating’: In-match coaching has always happened on the sly, but this year is the first time the Australian Open has allowed players to be coached from the stands.Rod Laver Likes What He Sees: At 84 years old, the man with his name on the stadium sits courtside at the Australian Open.India’s Superstar: Sania Mirza, who leaves tennis as a sleeping giant, has been a trailblazer nonetheless. “I would like to have a quieter life,” she said.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Hours later, Tennis Australia, which had been criticized for not acting more swiftly to snuff out demonstrations that might incite violence, released its own statement, saying that it had worked with police to remove the demonstrators and spoken with players and their teams about the importance of not engaging in any activity that causes distress or disruption. The organization noted Srdjan Djokovic’s decision not to attend the match.“Tennis Australia stands with the call for peace and an end to war and violent conflict in Ukraine,” the statement said.After the match, Djokovic said his father’s actions had been misinterpreted, that he had no intention of offering support to Russia and the war.“We are against the war, we never will support any violence or any war,” he said. “We know how devastating that is for the family, for people in any country that is going through the war.”He said he and his father decided together that it would be best for him not to attend the semifinal but he hoped he would be there watching him in the final on Sunday.“It wasn’t pleasant not to have him in the box,” he said.Only Djokovic knows how the incident affected his play, but he was erratic early against Paul, the first-time Grand Slam semifinalist from the United States. Djokovic jumped out to an early 5-1 lead, but after he complained to the chair umpire about a fan who was harassing him he fell into a temporary funk. He dropped the next four games as the crowd rallied behind the American underdog and taunted the defending champion. Boos echoed through the stadium after Djokovic steadied himself to win the first set, 7-5.Djokovic responded by putting his hand to his ear and waving his hands as if to say, “bring it on,” which spurred the clumps of Serbian fans who attend Djokovic’s matches no matter where in the world he is playing to drown out the howls.Tsitsipas lost to Djokovic in the 2021 French Open finals after surrendering a two-set lead.Fazry Ismail/EPA, via ShutterstockThe atmosphere is likely to be even more spirited on Sunday against Tsitsipas, who is a local favorite because of Australia’s significant Greek population, among the largest in the world outside of Greece and the United States. It will be a rematch of the French Open final in 2021. There, Djokovic came back from two sets down to win his second French Open singles title.Tsitsipas has struggled to recover from that loss but has been playing arguably his best tennis since then at this tournament. Whoever wins will be the world’s top-ranked player.On Friday, he beat Karen Khachanov of Russia in four sets, 7-6 (2), 6-4, 6-7 (6), 6-3. At 4-4 in the second set, Tsitsipas turned a tight match, scrambling for a series of overheads and winning the 22-shot rally with a rolling forehand winner to break Khachanov’s serve, then clinched the set in the next game. Despite wobbling in the third set with the finish line in sight, Tsitsipas came out strong in the fourth set and cruised into his second Grand Slam final, a test he said he has never been more ready for, especially with the Greek-Australian Mark Philippoussis helping his father coach.“I just see no downside or negativity in what I’m trying to do out there,” he said after beating Khachanov. “Even if it doesn’t work, I’m very optimistic and positive about any outcome, any opponent that I have to face. This is something that has been sort of lacking in my game.”Djokovic has not struggled with internal negativity in years, with good reason. He has won four of the last six Grand Slams he has played and is often most dangerous when facing adversity. The negativity he has had to deal with is external, whether it’s criticism for his refusal to be vaccinated against Covid-19, or his requests that fans who try to disrupt him be removed from his matches, which has happened several times during this tournament.“It’s not pleasant for me to go through this with all the things that I had to deal with last year and this year in Australia,” he said. “It’s not something that I want or need.”There may be plenty of criticism at Sunday’s final. Chances are, Djokovic will be ready for it. More

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      An Australian Open Final With Tennis and Debate on the Ukraine War

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      Nearly a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, a Russian-turned-Kazakh will play a Belarusian in the finals, which is sure to stir the debate over whether athletes from those countries should participate in international sports.MELBOURNE, Australia — In the two women’s semifinal matches at the Australian Open on Thursday night, geopolitics won in straight sets.For nearly a year, professional tennis — the most international of sports with its globe-trotting schedule and players from all over the world — has tried to balance its stated opposition to the Russian president Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine with its hopes that its competitions rise above the quagmire of international politics.It is not going well. Geopolitics has been everywhere at the Australian Open and will be on center stage in the women’s final.It has been 11 months since the sport banned Russia and Belarus from participating in team events at tournaments, as well as any symbol that identified those countries. It’s been nine months since Wimbledon prohibited players representing Russia and Belarus from competing, and it’s unclear whether they will be able to play this year. Players from Ukraine have lobbied to have them barred from all events instead of simply not being allowed to play under their flags or for their countries.That has not happened, and on Saturday Elena Rybakina, a native Russian who became a citizen of Kazakhstan five years ago in exchange for financial support, and Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus will meet for the women’s singles title.Both Rybakina and Sabalenka, who blast serves and pummel opponents into submission, played tight first sets, then ran away with their matches.Rybakina beat Victoria Azarenka, another Belarusian, 7-6 (4), 6-3, while Sabalenka topped Magda Linette of Poland, 7-6 (1), 6-2. Conditions at this tournament — warm weather, balls the players say are tough to spin — have favored the big flat hitters since the first round, making the final showdown between Rybakina and Sabalenka almost inevitable.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.No Spotlight, No Problem: In tennis, there is a long history of success and exposure crushing champions or sucking the joy out of them. In this Australian Open, players under the radar have gone far.Victoria Azarenka’s ‘Little Steps’: The Belarusian player took a more process-oriented approach than in the past. The outcomes were strong.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Endless Games: As matches stretch into the early-morning hours, players have grown concerned for their health and performance.The matchup is sure to rekindle the debate over Russian and Belarusian participation in sports, a discussion that has become increasingly heated in recent days, both at this tournament and throughout the world. Rybakina’s and Sabalenka’s victories occurred hours after videos surfaced of Novak Djokovic’s father, Srdjan, posing with fans who waved a Russian flag and wore the pro-war “Z” logo and voicing his support of Russia, against tournament rules. Serbia and Russia have close historical and cultural ties.Another video raised the ire of Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia and New Zealand, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, who wrote on Twitter, “It’s a full package. Among the Serbian flags, there is: a Russian flag, Putin, Z-symbol, so-called Donetsk People’s Republic flag.”Last week, Tennis Australia, organizers of the Australian Open, prohibited fans from exhibiting any form of the Russian or Belarusian flags or other symbols that supported Russia’s war in Ukraine.On Thursday, Tennis Australia said four people waving the banned flags had been detained and questioned by the police for both revealing the “inappropriate flags” and threatening security guards.Djokovic, the nine-time Australian Open champion, plays in the semifinals Friday against Tommy Paul of the United States.On Wednesday, the International Olympic Committee made clear that it was intent on having athletes from Russia and Belarus at the 2024 Olympics in Paris. The move went against the stated wishes of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who lobbied President Emmanuel Macron of France on the issue earlier this week.The I.O.C. last year recommended that sports federations not allow athletes from those countries to compete, a move it said protected Olympic sports from having the national governments in countries hosting competitions from inserting their politics into sports. Most international sports federations have followed that recommendation, but a few have recently relaxed their stances.In a statement Wednesday, the organization said, “No athlete should be prevented from competing just because of their passport.” The I.O.C. said it planned to pursue “a pathway for athletes’ participation in competition under strict conditions.” If it follows recent precedent, that will most likely involve requiring Russians and Belarusians to compete either under a neutral flag or no flag at all and in uniforms without their national colors.Russian and Belarusian athletes could also compete in the Asian Games later this year, which will serve as an Olympic qualifier.The geopolitical strife at the Australian Open hasn’t even been limited to the war in Ukraine. Karen Khachanov of Russia, who faces Stefanos Tsitsipas in a semifinal Friday, has been writing messages of support to the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. The area is a long-disputed enclave that is home to tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians within Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders, where a full-scale war was fought in 2020. Since December, Azerbaijani activists have blocked a main supply route for Nagorno-Karabakh, causing a growing humanitarian crisis.Karen Khachanov of Russia, who faces Stefanos Tsitsipas in a semifinal Friday, has been writing messages of support to the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.Ng Han Guan/Associated PressKhachanov, who is of Armenian descent and has spent extensive time in the country, said Wednesday he “just wanted to show strength and support to my people.”Khachanov’s messages prompted officials in Azerbaijan to write to the International Tennis Federation demanding it punish Khachanov. His messages do not violate any tournament or federation rules. He said Wednesday no one had told him to stop writing them.All this has put tennis back where it was last summer at Wimbledon. The tournament, along with the Lawn Tennis Association, prohibited players from participating in the sport’s most prestigious event and the lead-up tournaments in Britain.The men’s and women’s tours responded by refusing to award rankings points, an attempt to essentially turn Wimbledon into an exhibition. All the Grand Slams are supposed to abide by the sport’s rules prohibiting discrimination, but not awarding points for wins at Wimbledon also turned the tour’s rankings into something of a farce.Rybakina, a Russian through her childhood who became a citizen of Kazakhstan at 18 when the country promised to pay for her tennis training, spent the better part of two weeks talking about whether she was actually Kazakh or Russian and being asked to answer for her native country’s invasion as she stampeded to the title. Her family still lives in Russia.She has mostly not had to answer any political questions here. The actual Russians and Belarusians received those, allowing Rybakina to focus on tennis.“I think at Wimbledon I answered all the questions,” she said. “There is nothing to say anymore.”Sabalenka and the other players from Belarus and Russia have not had that luxury. They know how the world and many of their competitors have viewed them and their countries.“I just understand that it’s not my fault,” she said. “I have zero control. If I could do something, of course I would do it, but I cannot do anything.”The political currents show no sign of letting up. Wimbledon and the Lawn Tennis Association are discussing whether to let the players from Belarus and Russia participate this year. A decision is expected in the coming weeks. Wimbledon was the only Grand Slam to prohibit them from participating.Djokovic, the defending Wimbledon champion and seven-time winner of the championship, has been strategizing with his fledgling players’ organization, the Professional Tennis Players Association, to get the ban lifted.Russian players are desperate to get back to the All England Club.“The last information that I heard was, like, maybe one week ago that the announcement will be in couple of weeks,” Andrey Rublev said after Djokovic beat him in their quarterfinal Wednesday. “We’re all waiting. Hopefully we’ll be able to play. I would love to play. Wimbledon is one of the best tournaments in our sport.” More

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      War and Motherhood Sidelined Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina. She’s Ready to Return.

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      Rather than struggling to compete on the WTA Tour most of 2022, the tennis star focused on her new daughter and raising money to help her fellow Ukrainians.Elina Svitolina, the most successful Ukrainian women’s tennis player in history, has not played tennis in 10 months.She is a new mother — her daughter, Skaï, was born in October — and Svitolina is, like many prominent Ukrainians, a crusader, focused on raising money and awareness for her embattled country.Based in Switzerland with her husband, the French tennis star Gaël Monfils, Svitolina has sensed that the wider world is losing interest in the conflict with Russia.“Here in Europe, a couple of times people came up to me and asked if there is still war going on in Ukraine,” she said in a video interview. “This was very, very sad for me to hear. I have close friends and family back in Ukraine, and I know what they are going through.”When hope and energy run low, she thinks of her 85-year-old grandmother Tamara, still in Odesa, the vibrant, strategically vital port on the Black Sea where Svitolina was born and lived in her early years.“The winter is very tough right now for Ukrainians,” Svitolina said. “Obviously, it’s very cold, and they are often without electricity and running water. My grandmother lives on the 13th floor, and she needs to walk all the way up to her apartment because she cannot use the elevator. She could get stuck, or there are no lights at all. I have many friends in different cities, and they tell me the same stories. No lights. No water. They are just sitting at home. Most of the time, the phones die after one day so you cannot connect with them.”With her grandmother and her compatriots in mind, Svitolina is using her clout to help keep the power on. An ambassador for United24, a Ukrainian fund-raising platform, she organized a gala event in Monaco in December that raised 170,000 euros, or about $181,000. She said that 57,000 euros that were raised have been earmarked for the purchase of generators for Ukrainian hospitals.“Without electricity in the hospitals, they cannot perform some essential surgeries,” she said. “Our goal for the generators is 10 million euros.” They have raised 2.9 million so far, she added. “But we need more help.”Svitolina, ranked as high as No. 3 in 2017, was a semifinalist at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 2019 and has long been one of the sport’s best movers and counterpunchers. But she has not played since losing in her opening round of the Miami Open in March. Newly pregnant and reeling emotionally after the Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, she said she realized she could not continue to compete. She spent days drained or in tears and has worked with a psychologist and leaned on Monfils and her family but also benefited, she said, from time on her own, time in her own head.“I didn’t touch a racket for seven months,” she said. “I wanted to switch off from tennis. I had maybe too much because of what happened in the end of February and all the nerves and all the pressure. The tournaments I played were probably too much for me mentally, so I was really happy to switch off completely. Right now, for me the goal is to come back, but I’m sure I won’t regret that I took this time off.”Svitolina and Monfils, a luminous, acrobatic talent and intermittent top 10 men’s player, were married in 2021 and are one of the game’s power couples. But Monfils missed much of the last season with foot and heel injuries.Both are targeting comebacks in 2023. Monfils, 36, has often talked about his desire to play until age 40, but, as a new father, he has shortened that timeline. He now plans to continue at least until the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, where the tennis event will be held on the red clay at Roland Garros, the site of the French Open. Svitolina would like nothing better than to win a medal for Ukraine in those Games.But Svitolina, who only recently resumed training, is not planning on a quick return even if the back problems that troubled her before her hiatus are resolved for now.“I will try to be ready for the summer, but I try not to rush things,” she said. “Because I know I need to be very strong to be back on tour, because right now tennis is very physical. All your muscle groups need to be ready and after not playing for over seven months and not doing so much after pregnancy, of course, your body is different now. And I have to really break everything down into small pieces to put together the full strength of my body, which I will need if I want to get back to the top.”At 28, she certainly has time in a sport where more players are competing deep into their thirties and where more women also have made successful returns from childbirth, including Kim Clijsters, Victoria Azarenka, Serena Williams and Tatjana Maria, who reached the semifinals at Wimbledon in 2022 after her second extended break from the game because of pregnancy.“I’m sure that they worked extremely hard to get back where they were and some of them are even better,” Svitolina said. “So that certainly gives me hope and motivation I can do the same.”Svitolina’s only contact with tennis during her break came in July, when she served as the chair umpire in an exhibition to raise funds for Ukrainian children that was organized by Iga Swiatek, the young and increasingly outspoken world No. 1 from Poland.Svitolina has appreciated Swiatek’s public support but remains disgruntled about the pro tours’ decision to allow Russian and Belarusian players to continue competing, albeit as neutrals without national identification. While Wimbledon barred the Russians and Belarusians because of the war it was an outlier and was stripped of ranking points in retaliation by both the men’s and women’s tours, who also fined the tournament and Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association.“I was shocked to see this,” she said. “The U.K., they always supported Ukrainians; they helped so many Ukrainian refugees to find new homes. I think the tours should have respected Wimbledon’s decision rather than punish them, but it’s really hard to see what will change the tours’ position, even if I don’t agree or understand it.”Through her personal foundation, she said she had been involved in helping more than 100 young Ukrainian players and their families find new training bases even if some have had to return to Ukraine. But she has no illusions about the challenge ahead and is all too aware of the destruction. She lived in her early teens in Kharkiv, recently reoccupied by Ukrainian forces but one of the cities that has suffered the most damage during the war. The arena in which she and her Ukrainian teammates once played Fed Cup matches has been destroyed by bombing.“Our athletes and our sports have been thrown back at least four or five years, because all the stadiums, all the facilities in Ukraine were destroyed,” she said. “After the war is finished, I really want to help to build a tennis center that kids can use to train. And it’s not just facilities that were destroyed. I think our kids have mentally been destroyed as well. Some of them lose their parents. Some of them are homeless. They see these explosions, these shootings. A whole generation I think mentally is really facing a big struggle.”It has been a year to rue but, for Svitolina, a year also to savor.“The most horrible year with the war and also the most happy I would say with welcoming our first baby in October,” she said. “So, it’s a mixture of everything, but we are here right now, and for me it’s just important to do everything possible every single day that I can. And for now, the goal is for the Ukrainian people to at least have a little light in their lives.” More

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      Shakhtar Donetsk Claims FIFA Rule Is Hurting Teams From Ukraine

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      A hearing will be held over a rule that allows overseas players to suspend their contracts with Ukrainian teams during the Russian invasion.LONDON — Fresh from the conclusion of the men’s World Cup, soccer’s governing body FIFA faces a legal challenge of its rule that allowed players to immediately leave Ukrainian club teams because of Russia’s invasion.On Thursday, sport’s top court will begin hearing a more than $40 million claim for damages brought against FIFA by a top Ukrainian soccer team.The hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland, centers on a temporary rule by FIFA that allowed overseas players on Ukrainian teams to suspend their contracts and sign for teams elsewhere. The Ukrainian league stopped play for about six months, then restarted in August.Shakhtar Donetsk, the club that is bringing the claim, has lost several of its top players without receiving a transfer fee under a regulation first implemented in March. The system is slated to run at least until June next year.Under FIFA’s emergency statute change, the suspension is only temporary, meaning that many players will eventually have to return to their host teams in Ukraine as their contracts continue to run. But with little sign of the war ending, many of those players may be out of contract by the time FIFA lifts the temporary order, which would enable them to leave as free agents.The State of the WarA Botched Invasion: Secret battle plans, intercepts and interviews with soldiers and Kremlin confidants offer new insight into the stunning failures of Russia’s military in Ukraine.A New Russian Offensive? A top adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine is bracing for the possibility that Russia will sharply escalate the war in a winter offensive that could include mass infantry attacks.Putin in Belarus: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia made a rare visit to Belarus, raising concerns in Ukraine that Russian forces could aim again at Kyiv, which is near the Belarusian border.The War in the Skies: As Ukrainian officials warn of a new Russian ground offensive, waves of Russian missiles continue to batter Ukraine’s infrastructure. The attacks are leaving a trail of destruction and grief.“We want fairness and justice,” Sergei Palkin, Shakhtar’s chief executive, told The New York Times. “On one side FIFA protects players but it should also protect clubs.”FIFA did not respond to a message seeking comment.Shakhtar has seen millions of dollars’ worth of talent leave for nothing since the invasion started, losing a crucial source of revenue it requires to balance its books. Last summer, it could only watch as top players moved without fees to teams in England’s Premier League, historically a lucrative market for Shakhtar, and also to France’s top division.“Two days before FIFA made the announcement, we almost had a contract on the table: we were to sign the next day,” Palkin said of one high value sale that was scuttled. The club pulled out from the talks, he added, learning it could instead register the same player for free.To make matters worse, no special provisions have been put in place for Ukrainian teams whose finances have been crushed by the ongoing war. The league was initially suspended before restarting without fans, even as the war continues. Several matches have been suspended by air raid sirens, with players and officials forced to take cover in shelters.Shakhtar and the other Ukrainian teams are still required to pay money owed to teams outside the country, including for players that have been allowed to suspend their contracts.Palkin described an example of one situation in which the team agreed to sign a player from an Italian team just before the Russian invasion. The player never set foot in Ukraine and was allowed to move elsewhere, leaving Shakthar on the hook for about $9 million. It asked his former team to scrap the deal and to sell him elsewhere, but those talks floundered. Shakhtar has balked at the payment, Palkin said, and the club, which he declined to name, is asking FIFA to punish Shakhtar.Palkin said efforts to come to an arrangement with FIFA have largely been met with silence. Multiple Ukrainian teams have asked the governing body to suspend their obligations to other clubs until normal operations can be established. He also suggested FIFA, which announced it had made $7.5 billion from the World Cup in Qatar, could also establish “a reparation fund” for Ukrainian teams.Shakhtar, which is owned by the billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, has the highest payroll among Ukrainian teams. But it is also benefiting from playing in the Champions League, Europe’s top club competition. Its home games are played across the border in Poland and have provided a lucrative — and much needed — financial boost, as well as providing a platform for its domestically reared talent, which, unlike foreign players, are not able to suspend their contracts.That has allowed Palkin to try and negotiate player sales ahead of the opening of the midseason European player trading window next month. He attended meetings in London recently with English clubs interested in signing forward Mykhailo Mudryk, 21, who is considered to be one of European soccer’s biggest emerging talents.Palkin said he is conscious of teams looking to take advantage of his team’s situation and is unwilling to be forced to sell for a below-market price despite the ongoing hardship. That means Mudryk could remain with Shakhtar until next summer’s off-season, a time when the biggest trades are typically made. “It’s quite a long negotiation process,” he said.The Ukrainian league is currently on break for the winter and is scheduled to restart in March. By then, there should be a resolution in Shakhtar’s case against FIFA.“We want to sit together with all the stakeholders and work out a plan,” Palkin said. “And we want fairness and justice.” More

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      in Basket

      An Open Letter to Welcome Home Brittney Griner

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      When Griner was imprisoned in Russia, letters were her main form of communication with home. Our columnist offers one last letter to mark her return to the United States.Welcome home, Brittney. At long last, welcome home.Like so many others, I wondered if this day would ever come.Now you are home and safe after nearly 10 months of brutal uncertainty and fear.Home and safe after isolating imprisonment in a Russia that has cast aside international norms.Home and safe after getting trapped in a web of geopolitics that grew thicker each day as the war in Ukraine dragged on. What you endured over the last 10 months is nearly unfathomable. As a Black, openly gay woman, you were in particular danger as a prisoner in a country with dangerous, retrograde views on race and sexuality.Home — and safe. What a turn of events.And yet, less than a day after your plane touched down at a Texas military base, controversy and conversation swirl.Some voices say the Biden administration should never have swapped a W.N.B.A. star in a one-for-one trade for Viktor Bout, a former Soviet Army lieutenant colonel described by the Justice Department as one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers.Others feel that you deserved no help, that you alone should have answered to Russian authorities for the mistake of having vape cartridges containing a trace of cannabis oil in your luggage, even though you’ve said you use the substance for pain management.The Release of Brittney GrinerThe American basketball star had been detained in Russia since February on charges of smuggling hashish oil into the country.Anxiety Turns to Relief: Brittney Griner’s supporters watched with dismay as her situation appeared to worsen over the summer. Now they are celebrating her release.The Russian Playbook: By detaining Ms. Griner, the Kremlin weaponized pain to get the United States to turn over a convicted arms dealer. Can the same tactic work in the war in Ukraine?A Test for Women’s Sports: The release was a victory for W.N.B.A. players and fans, who pushed furiously for it. But the athlete’s plight also highlighted gender inequities in sports.Then there are those hailing the White House for committing an act of mercy in pressing for your return.I’ll leave the political discussion to someone else. I want to focus on another part of the conversation. Already people are asking: What’s next?When will you return to the W.N.B.A., your Phoenix Mercury teammates, and the U.S. national team you helped lead to a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics?Roughly a decade ago, you became one of the first Black and openly lesbian headliners in women’s basketball. In your trademark soft-spoken manner, you pushed for racial and social change in America. So will you use this moment to become an even more powerful advocate?Will you do more, Brittney?“What’s next” is an understandable query, but I hope folks pump the brakes.Brittney, you shouldn’t feel you owe anything more than the gratitude you’ve already expressed to those who stood by your side and worked for your release.You have done more than enough. Don’t feel you have to do anything but heal.During this ordeal, we all saw the anguish and tears of your wife, Cherelle Griner. She, no surprise, has said the two of you will speak up for Americans the State Department has said were wrongly detained in other countries, including Paul Whelan, who has been imprisoned in Russia since 2018.Before all this happened, you might not have been well-known outside of sports circles. Now, more and more people have heard about how you were part of a wave of W.N.B.A. players who spoke up for racial injustice. More know that you have fought to help L.G.B.T.Q. people and those without homes in Phoenix.So it’s exciting to think about your next move and how you can use your platform for good.When I spoke to Victor Kozar, the Mercury’s president, this week, he mentioned the letters you exchanged over the last several months. “At all times, she was asking about other people,” said Kozar, your boss and friend. “Her concern was about other people. First and foremost, she asked how her teammates were doing, asking us to ensure we were taking care of her wife.”“That’s B.G.,” he added. “Even under this kind of duress, it was not about her. It was about others.”Sports stars offer us inspiration in many ways. Most commonly, it’s on fields and courts, through performances that allow us to see how we can be stretched to the limit.Brittney, you’ve inspired us in ways that matter more than slam dunks, blocked shots or championships.When you were freed, I thought about the timing. This week, Congress voted to cement federal recognition of same-sex and interracial marriages. (It’s a huge deal for me, too, since I have a nonbinary family member and my Black father and white mother married in 1954, when such unions were finally becoming legal in a smattering of states.)It’s sad that it took until 2022 to ensure such rights, but think about how far we’ve come. Ten or twenty years ago, if you’d been imprisoned in Russia, we probably would not have discussed race, sexual orientation and how those facts of your life put you in danger, this openly and often.“Brittney’s situation is a sign of progress, a sign that our nation has moved tremendously.” That’s how Victoria Kirby York, the National Black Justice Coalition public policy director, put it when she and I chatted Thursday. She noted the serious work that remains to be done, but added: “We have seen Americans move toward racial justice, and we are only going to see more of that happen, and a big part of it is people like Brittney Griner inviting us to see who they really are.”Rest with that, Brittney. May it be part of the support that helps you heal.My guess is that you’ll head back to basketball in due time — particularly when I think about how you grew up, with the game providing solace and healing for a young, Black, gay woman edging toward 7 feet tall in the American South of the 1990s and early 2000s.If history is any guide, you are likely to continue with advocacy and speaking out.Now your name and your story have a resonance few in the sports world can top. Who can better speak to our American shortcomings than someone scorned by many at home but also saved and spared by the intense efforts of the U.S. government?Then again, maybe you don’t do any of this. Brittney, don’t look back or feel bad if you want to ride into the sunset now, healing away from the public eye and maybe staying away for good.If that’s the decision, wonderful. Either way, we’ve got your back. More