KIEV/RIGA, 3 Feb. (dpa/EP) –
The Ukrainian Olympic Committee wants to prevent Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing in the Paris Games next year because “as long as the war lasts” and it does not end in a “victory” for Ukraine they cannot “see” them and thus avoid a possible boycott of their own to the event.
The Minister of Sports and president of the Olympic body of his country, Vadim Gutzeit, declared after the extraordinary assembly of the committee this Friday that they are determined to guarantee that no Russian or Belarusian can participate in the French capital.
“As long as the war lasts, as long as they bombard our homeland, as long as we fight for our independence and territorial integrity, we cannot see them. We have a great desire not to see them as long as the war does not end with our victory,” he said.
In this sense, he warned that if “everyone” does “everything possible” to prevent this Russian and Belarusian presence in Paris 2024, but it is not achieved, he believes that other measures should be taken. “So, and this is just my personal opinion, the Olympic Games will have to be boycotted. But this issue will only be decided jointly at an extraordinary meeting of our Olympic Committee,” he stressed.
Russian and Belarusian athletes have been banned from most major sporting events since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but with a year to go since the conflict, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is now studying the possibility that they return as neutrals to events like the Paris Games.
This has led to a threat to boycott the Parisian event by Ukraine and the condemnation of this position by countries such as Great Britain or Poland, and also Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the three Baltic nations.
“It is shameful to put Ukrainian athletes in a situation where they have to face Russians in sports. The Olympic Movement should not put athletes from all other countries in this situation,” said Kaja Kallas, Prime Minister of Estonia, after meeting this Friday with his Latvian counterparts, Krisjanis Karins, and Lithuanian, Ingrida Simonyte.
The leader recalled that Russia “has been destroying the Ukrainian nation, its state and its people for a year” and that “it has killed hundreds of Ukrainian athletes, including Olympic and world champions.” “Now allowing their athletes to enter the Olympic arena at the price of the blood of Ukrainians is not fair game, considering that Russia is using sport as a propaganda tool and that its athletes are actually Russian soldiers,” he added. she.
“If you look at the medalists at the Tokyo Olympics, 45 of them were actually members of the Russian military. And at the Beijing Winter Olympics, one in three members of the Russian team served in the Russian military.” Kallas detailed.
For his part, Simonyte stated that “Russian and Belarusian athletes would not pretend to be under any neutral flag because there is no neutrality in today’s world,” while Karins noted that his government and the Olympic Committee “would condemn and find morally reprehensible the fact that during this war Russian or Belarusian athletes will participate under any guise in the Olympic Games”.
