The trend continues: a third Russian player changes flag to represent Uzbekistan

World No. 104 Polina Kudermetova has joined the trend of Russian players changing their nationality and has been announced as a new player for Uzbekistan. In previous weeks, the Uzbekistan national team had already recruited two other young players of Russian nationality to join the Central Asian country.

Following the off-season, there are already several announcements of players who have changed their nationality. The Uzbekistan team added World No. 96 Kamila Rakhimova (24 years old) and World No. 143 Maria Timofeeva (22 years old), who changed their flags amidst the escalation of Russian tensions.

Let's remember that both Russian and Belarusian players cannot play under their own flag due to the restrictions in place since the conflict with Ukraine began. Thus, several players have changed nationality in recent times, highlighting especially the case of former World No. 8 Daria Kasatkina.

Dasha's case was particularly controversial. The former Indian Wells runner-up revealed her sexuality in a video interview in 2022 before leaving Russia, which has strict laws on LGBTQ+ rights. She also criticized the war in Ukraine and was affected after Russia targeted 'gay propaganda' since 2022, “making it illegal for anyone to promote same-sex relationships or suggest that non-heterosexual orientations are “normal,” according to CNN.

2025 has been marked by the change of citizenship of several other Russian players, especially after the end of the season. Polina Kudermetova—sister of current World No. 30 Veronika Kudermetova—was announced as an international player for Uzbekistan, something that has already been made official on the WTA website.

The 22-year-old player has a career-high ranking of World No. 57 achieved at the beginning of 2025, and has not yet added professional titles at the WTA level—although she reached the final of the Brisbane International at the start of the season, falling to World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka in three sets.

Since then, she has not had major appearances, although this year she added her first appearance in the third round of a WTA 1000—achieved at Indian Wells—and her first win in a major tournament after overcoming Nuria Parrizas Diaz in her US Open debut (following the Spaniard's retirement after just 4 games).

Kudermetova is not the only one who changed her nationality recently, as a few days ago the change of citizenship of Anastasia Potapova was highly discussed. The current World No. 50, aged 24, will represent Austria starting next season—quickly becoming the Austrian No. 1.

This time it was Uzbekistan who, for the third time this year, recruited a Russian player, and they are beginning to assemble a strong Billie Jean King Cup team, with three players inside the top 150—something that looked very far off a few months ago. Without considering the Russian-born players recently naturalized as Uzbeks, they only have one player inside the top 1000: 18-year-old Laima Vladson, a player who previously represented Lithuania and who also changed her citizenship during this year.