'No one wants to die, but it's our land' - Alexandr Dolgopolov on fighting for Ukraine, and stronger action on Russia

Former Ukraine tennis star Alexandr Dolgopolov has explained his decision to defend his country in the ongoing conflict with Russia. The 33-year-old took to social media on Wednesday to reveal that he had returned to Kyiv ready to fight, having initially fled to Turkey with his mother and sister at the start of the aggression. Ad/> In an exclusive interview with Eurosport, Dolgopolov revealed he had undergone weapons training in preparation, and explained his motivation to go back to Ukraine following Vladimir Putin's invasion of his country.

Rome MastersDjokovic makes light work of Dolgopolov in Rome14/05/2018 AT 15:01 “It was my decision and no one can stop me with my decisions. My father was sad. It was tough when we split.

He was very worried and obviously no one wanted me to be here. “But that's the reality. It's war.

What can we do? I'm sure that no one from our guys wants to die or be in this war, but it's our land." Dolgopolov spoke of ‘panic’ in the early days of the Russian invasion and how he felt the need to get his family away to the relative safety of Turkey, but equally felt compelled to come back at some stage. “I preferred to stay out of the country. And if something happened, I could really help in the social media way because I have many followers from around the world to show the truth because I have access to all the information inside the country.

“I thought I would be more useful outside of the country for the first few days because obviously I'm not in the army, I'm not going to be the first one fighting. And then after a few days, once it settled down, the fights got understandable where we were doing good, where we were doing not very good. And then I started to plan to go back.