Russian tennis player found an unconventional way to avoid Western sanctions
The best tennis player in Russia, winner of five WTA tournaments, Daria Kasatkina, admitted that she is a lesbian.
The athlete stated this in an interview on the YouTube channel of journalist Viktor Kravchenko, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“This phrase: if you want to be gay... If you want to, you don’t want to, you become or you don’t, what kind of nonsense is this. Really, there is nothing easier in the world than being straight. Given a choice, who would choose to be gay? Making life difficult for yourself. Seriously? Especially in Russia,” said Kasatkina.
After the interview, she posted a photo with figure skater Natalia Zabia on social networks.
Scandalous TV journalist Ksenia Sobchak suggests that such confessions among Russian athletes could become widespread after the adoption of a law banning the promotion of non-traditional sexual relationships in Russia. Last week, Russian State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein promised to introduce such a project to parliament in the fall.
“Could a repressive law in the future provoke a protest in the form of mass coming out of successful and popular people who are completely fed up with what is happening? Oh, no, no, it’s some kind of nonsense,” Sobchak wrote in her TG channel.
Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Physical Culture and Sports Dmitry Svishchev believes that Kasatkina’s achievements should interest people more than her personal life.
“Personally, I don’t care about her personal life. This is her personal matter. I'm interested in her athletic results. I believe she has the ability to move higher in the rankings. She’s great and plays well, so we all must support her in her sports results, so that she plays well and feels the support of the public,” Svishchev said in an interview with URA.RU.
Deputy editor of RIA Novosti Natalya Loseva considers the story of Kasatkina’s coming out to be speculation aimed at avoiding Western sanctions.
“Now there is a trump card: the tennis player did not just announce her gay orientation (why should we even know and discuss this?). She complained that in our country being a homosexual is very difficult, difficult and painful (rieli?). Now go and apply such a sanction, you will immediately add grist to the mill of the totalitarian regime,” Loseva wrote.
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