Slava Kurbanov, a veteran of Ukraine's amateur tennis scene and, by the account of those who played alongside him, one of its most familiar faces, has been killed while carrying out a combat mission on the front line, the Ukrainian Tennis Federation announced this week, according to ONE.
The federation said it learned of Kurbanov's death on August 13, and paid tribute to him as "a remarkable person and good human," adding: "Rest in peace, hero."
Kurbanov volunteered for Ukraine's armed forces in the earliest days of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, and went on, the federation said, to serve in some of the most intense sectors of the front.
Away from the war he was best known on the amateur courts of Ukraine, a regular at tournaments run by the Ukrainian Tennis Club, the "Amateur" series and the "Smash" league - grassroots events that make up the backbone of the country's recreational game. ONE's report described him as a legend of that scene.
Ukrainian sports outlets including Ukrinform, Obozrevatel and Glavcom carried near-identical tributes this week, a sign of how deeply Kurbanov's death has registered within the country's small but tightly knit amateur tennis community.
His death adds to a grim toll that Ukraine's sports ministry has tracked since the invasion began. In January, sports minister Matviy Bidny said more than 760 Ukrainian athletes and coaches had by then been killed as a result of the war, a figure he cited while urging the International Olympic Committee to reconsider its decision to ease restrictions on Russian competitors.
Kurbanov never featured on professional rankings or national squads, but his story has been repeated many times over since 2022: club-level sportspeople, and stars too, across football, boxing, chess and now tennis have left the courts, rinks and rings for the front, and many have not come back.
