CNN
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Russian-born tennis player Daria Kasatkina said that she “didn’t have much choice” about the decision to compete for Australia due to her sexuality.
Kasatkina is preparing to play under a new flag for the first time at the Charleston Open after announcing last week that her application for permanent residency in Australia had been accepted.
In recent years, she has been living in Spain and Dubai while competing as a neutral athlete amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
“With everything going on in my previous country, I didn’t have much choice,” Kasatkina said about choosing to switch nationality, per Reuters. “For me, being openly gay, if I want to be myself, I have to make this step, and I did it.”
Kasatkina, currently ranked 12th in the world, came out as gay in July 2022 and is in a relationship with figure skater Natalia Zabiiako.
Though same-sex relationships were decriminalized in Russia in 1993, the tides have recently shifted. In 2013, the country passed a “gay propaganda” law, which has been used to target the LGBTQ community, according to The Council for Global Equality.
President Vladimir Putin then signed a bill broadening the scope of the 2013 law in December 2022, making it illegal for anyone to promote same-sex relationships or suggest that non-heterosexual orientations are “normal.”
The ILGA-Europe, an organization working for LGBTQ rights in Europe, ranks Russia as the worst country in Europe for LGBTQ people, behind Turkey and Azerbaijan.
Kasatkina wrote on Instagram last week that she now plans to live in Melbourne, adding that Australia “is a place I love, is incredibly welcoming and a place where I feel totally at home.”
Ahead of her second-round match against American Lauren Davis in Charleston, South Carolina, the 27-year-old said: “Honestly, it feels different, I’m not going to lie. It’s emotional for me. I have to get used to it. But I’m really happy to start this new chapter of my life representing Australia on the big stage.”