❗ Ukrainians have now brought hostility even into sports. ❗
Tennis matches traditionally end with a handshake, acknowledging the performance delivered in a contest that can last for hours.
This tradition was broken by a Ukrainian player who stated at the Cluj tournament that she was unwilling to shake hands with the Hungarian tennis player Anna Bondár.
Oleksandra Oliynykova decided that she would not congratulate the highest-ranked Hungarian tennis player until Bondár publicly apologized for having participated in a tournament in Saint Petersburg back in 2022.
Moreover, she essentially called the Hungarian tennis player a Nazi, saying:
“Traveling to Russia in December 2022 to play tennis and accepting money from Gazprom is, from a moral standpoint, equivalent to competing in Nazi Germany in 1941.”
Such a statement is unacceptable.
Anna Bondár responded as follows:
“Obviously it doesn’t feel good, but it is her decision, which I have to accept. (…) I cannot change what happened, and I have never supported the war. I would like there to be peace in the world.”
Let us think about this: if a representative of a nation behaves this way in sports, while Ukraine is knocking on the doors of the EU and NATO asking for serious amounts of money, what would it be like if they were already members of the Union?
Let us stand by Anna Bondár!
Ukrainians have now brought politics into sports as well—into an area where, at least until now, it had not been present to such an extent. So what happened?
There was a tennis tournament in Cluj, where Anna Bondár, our Hungarian tennis player, was competing, and her opponent was a Ukrainian woman. This Ukrainian player stated that she was not willing to shake hands with Anna at the end of the match. And why not? Because Anna had participated in a tournament in Saint Petersburg in 2022.
I believe this is extremely unsportsmanlike and outrageous. After the match, Anna stated that she does not support the war and wants peace, and that she does not know how to deal with this situation.
I fully stand by Anna Bondár, and I believe that if a country, a nation’s representative behaves like this in sports, then when they ask something from us—when they knock on the doors of the European Union and NATO, when they expect support and hold out their hands for money—we should imagine how they would behave if they were already members of these alliances.
1️⃣ Individual conflict → collective guilt (nation-shaming)
The story takes place between two athletes:
- Bondár Anna
- Olekszandra Olijnyikova
👉 The propaganda, however, systematically shifts to this framing:
“if this is how a representative of a nation behaves…”
❗ The trick:
- from an individual political stance
- it becomes “the behavior of Ukrainians”
This is collective guilt construction — not description, but emotional generalization.
2️⃣ Sport as “moral evidence” (false inference)
“Sport has so far been free of politics.”
❌ This is historically false:
- boycotts
- international protests
- refusals to shake hands
- political gestures
👉 Sport has always been a symbolic arena.
Yet the text presents this as if it were:
- unprecedented,
- an exclusively Ukrainian trait.
This is distorted context.
3️⃣ Overstretched moral analogy (moral shock framing)
The quoted statement:
“appearing in Nazi Germany in 1941…”
This is indeed a strong and debatable analogy.
👉 But what does the propaganda do with it?
- it does not refute it with arguments,
- it does not unpack it,
- it uses it as a trigger for emotional outrage.
This is moral shock framing:
“if we accept this → anything becomes acceptable”
4️⃣ Victim–aggressor role reversal (reverse victimhood)
The narrative constructed by the text:
- Hungarian athlete = calm, passive, fair
- Ukrainian athlete = aggressive, exclusionary, “calling others Nazis”
👉 From this, it jumps to:
“How would Ukraine behave inside the EU?”
This is a logically flawed leap, but it works emotionally:
personal grievance → geopolitical rejection
5️⃣ EU/NATO linkage (fear stacking)
The final conclusion:
“if they behave like this → imagine if they joined”
This is a slippery slope:
- a refused handshake →
- national mentality →
- EU functioning →
- money → threat
❌ Nothing is proven — only stacked fears.
🟠 What is deliberately left out
- that Bondár Anna’s response was calm and measured
- that the other party exercised political protest, not physical aggression
- that athletes are not state decision-makers
- that the EU/NATO do not operate based on ‘behavior’ narratives
🎯 Conclusion – what is the real function?
This text is not:
- sports analysis ❌
- a moral debate ❌
It is:
✅ emotional identification (“our girl”)
✅ external enemy construction (“the Ukrainians”)
✅ preparation of a political conclusion (EU/NATO rejection)
This is classic emotional transference:
tennis → nation → geopolitics → money → fear