Daria Kasatkina follows Andrey Rublev in hinting at a possible defection in the future

Andrey Rublev suggest in an interview that might explore changing his citizenship if the bans for Russian continue and Daria Kasatkina could do the same.

Both of them were interviewed by Russian Youtuber Mitya Kravchenko as two of the most outspoken tennis players from Russia during these turbulent times. Rublev hinted at a possible change of citizenship should the bans continue with both of these scenarios unlikely at the moment.

He said:

“Speaking about access to Wimbledon, it would be acceptable to change the passport. Participation would be allowed then. If we are banned from all tournaments and I want to continue a sports career then, yes, that would be one of the options.”

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The situation for Kasatkina is much trickier especially after the Russian player came out as gay in the same interview. Homosexualism is pretty much banned in all but in name in Russia. The country banned 'promotion' of it in 2013 stopping any gay pride events and detaining activists. There have been suggestions that it would be legally banned altogether in the future.

On all of that, Kasatkina said:

"Our federation went out of existence for the International Tennis Federation. The world championship was taken away from us. Things are up in the air with the Olympics. Passport change? We’ll see.”

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