Russia's Highest-Ranked Female Tennis Player Comes Out

Russia's highest-ranked female tennis player, Daria Kasatkina, has come out as gay, according to UK news site the Guardian. Kasatkina also condemned Russia's "taboos" against LGBTQ+ people, and she denounced the confines of the closet.

In the new interview, the 25-year-old tennis star, who is currently ranked as #12 in the world by the Women's Tennis Association, came out unapologetically as being in a same-sex relationship.

Kasatkina made her remarks from Barcelona, in an interview with a Russian blogger named Vitya Kravchenko, reports detailed, and she lamented that she and her girlfriend would not be able to so much as hold hands legally in Russia.

She took to Twitter to post a photo of herself with her girlfriend, Olympic silver medallist figure skater Natalia Zabiiako, calling her "My cutie pie."

Ironically, the tweet was flagged by the platform with a warning about "potentially sensitive content" – namely, the two women, fully clothed and wearing hoodies, in a partial embrace and looking into the camera.

Kasatkina had identified herself as bisexual last year "in an interview with Russian journalist Sofya Tartakova," UK news site the Express recalled.

Saying it was "pointless" to live a stifled life in hiding, Kasatkina told the blogger that a person's self-knowledge about being LGBTQ+ "would always be going round in your head, until you say something," DW.com recounted. Though, she added, "Obviously, each person decides how to open up and how much."

She also spoke up on behalf of "young people who have a hard time with society and need support." Some of that support should come, she suggested, from sports figures such as herself.

"Kasatkina praised Nadezhda Karpova for paving the way," DW noted, "after the soccer player became the first Russian sportswoman to come out in June."

"I was happy for her, but also other people," Kasatkina said, adding, "especially girls needed to know that."

"There had been a push for more openness at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, Kasatkina said, but this momentum was lost after Russia invaded Ukraine," DW added.

Kasatkina made her revelations even as the Russian parliament is moving to expand the country's notorious "Don't Say Gay" law from 2013, which criminalizes any expression supportive of non-heterosexual or non-cisgender people in a context where children could witness it. The law, which purportedly bans so-called "gay propaganda," has provided a legal rationale for the country's crackdowns on LGBTQ+ equality advocates and Pride events.

The expanded law proposed by Russian lawmakers would impose "a complete ban on 'promotion' of LGBTQ+ relationships in a positive or neutral light, to adults as well as minors, and on showing LGBTQ+ content in cinemas," the Guardian noted.