World number 7 Elina Svitolina is in the midst of a Fed Cup row with the Ukrainian federation after withdrawing from next week’s Zone Group I ties in Poland.
The 24 year-old was due to represent Ukraine in Zielona Gora next week as they look to qualify for the World Group II play-offs in April.
However Svitolina has withdrawn as she still attempts to recover from neck and shoulder injuries suffered during her Australian Open quarter-final with Naomi Osaka.
Despite her reasoning though the federation have said that injuries was not why Svitolina pulled out and have said that her agent made unreasonable financial demands. So according to Ukrainian officials that is why Svitolina is not playing in Poland instead.
In a statement the federation said the following, “playing matches for your national team should be a matter of patriotism, dedication and respect for the sporting honour of Ukraine.”
They also claim that Dayana Yastremska withdrew from the squad for the same reasons as both her and Svitolina have the same agent.
However the WTA Finals champion responded on Facebook in Ukrainian and says that finance was not the deciding factor in not playing next week, “I read the statement about not playing Poland because of the money. Definitely from the side of my agent was negotiating with the representatives of the team and it is standard world practice, but finance was not and could not be a key moment in the matter of performance by the national team.”
As the dispute continues Ukraine will hope that this doesn’t distract them from qualifying to the World Group II play-offs when they compete in a round-robin format in Poland next week.
They will now be represented by Lesia Tsurenko, Kateryna Kozlova, Marta Kostyuk and Nadiia Kichenok. They will have to play Bulgaria, Estonia and Sweden in their group.
