MOSCOW, February 9. /TASS/. Russian tennis player Daria Kasatkina blazed past Romania’s Sorana Cirstea with a straight-sets win of 6-2; 6-0 on Friday in the quarterfinals of the 2024 WTA (the Women's Tennis Association) Abu Dhabi tennis tournament.

In her next match on the road to the tournament’s final, the 7th-seeded Kasatkina is set to face off against 6th-seeded Brazilian Beatriz Haddad Maia.

In the other semifinal match of the tournament in Abu Dhabi, Russia’s Lyudmila Samsonova is set to take on the tournament’s top-seed Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan.

Kasatkina, 26, is currently ranked 14th in the WTA Rankings and has six WTA tournament titles to her name. To date, her best result in Grand Slams was in 2022 when she reached the semifinals of the French Open. She was also part of the Russian team that won the 2021 Billie Jean King Cup.

The 2024 Abu Dhabi tournament is a WTA 500 professional tennis event, which is played on outdoor hard courts at the Zayed Sports City International Tennis Centre in Abu Dhabi between February 5 and 11 and has over $922,570 in prize money up for grabs.

Russian players’ neutral status at tennis tournaments

On February 28, 2022, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued recommendations to international sports federations to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from taking part in international tournaments, citing Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine as the reason.

Following the IOC’s recommendations in late February 2022, the majority of global sports federations decided to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from all international sports tournaments.

The International Tennis Federation (ITF) ruled on March 1, 2022 to suspend the membership of the Russian and Belarusian national tennis federations while also canceling all previously scheduled tennis tournaments in the two countries.

On March 14, 2022, the ITF also confirmed its prohibition of the Russian and Belarusian national tennis teams from the 2022 Davis Cup and 2022 Billie Jean King Cup.

However, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) allowed tennis players from Russia and Belarus to continue participating in WTA and ATP tournaments, but only under a neutral status.