Ukraine tennis player’s apartment destroyed in Russian strike – BBC News
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Only Roland Garros towel left, says Ukraine tennis player after Russian strike hits flat
Image source: DSNS / Odesa region
Dayana Yastremska said her family’s apartment was destroyed in "a direct hit by a Kalibr cruise missile" fired by Russia.
By Jaroslav Lukiv
Published 53 minutes ago
Ukrainian tennis player Dayana Yastremska has described the devastation caused to her family’s flat after it was targeted in a Russian aerial strike on the Black Sea port city of Odesa.
"This is what the ‘Russian world’ looks like," she wrote on social media, sharing a photo of a burning multi-storey residential building.
"A direct hit by a Kalibr cruise missile," she added, posting an image of a famous orange Roland Garros towel from Paris’s Grand Slam tournament hanging from the wreckage.
"The only thing that survived was a Roland Garros… towel," she said.
Odesa regional head Oleh Kiper reported 37 injuries, including a baby, and two people missing following the missile and drone attack on Odesa and nearby Chornomorsk on Friday night.
Image source: Dayana Yastremska / Facebook
Yastremska later posted on Instagram: "A Russian missile destroyed our apartment in Odesa… SYMBOLIC. A piece of world tennis survived a Russian missile. Our home did not."
She directed the governing bodies of world tennis, the WTA and ITF, to view the images.
Yastremska, who reached the semifinal stage of the 2024 Australian Open, is currently ranked 113th in the women’s world singles rankings.
This 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, Ukrainian international football midfielder Heorhiy Sudakov said his flat in Kyiv had been severely damaged by a Russian drone while his wife and child were at home.
