- The Olympic Committee announced on January 25 that Russian athletes could compete as neutrals.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the move makes terror “somehow acceptable.”
- Zelenskyy said Olympic principles and war are fundamental opposites.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian athletes should not be allowed to compete in the 2024 Olympics in Paris while the war in Ukraine rages on.
“Attempts by the International Olympic Committee to bring Russian athletes back into the Olympic Games are attempts to tell the whole world that terror is somehow acceptable,” Zelenskyy said on January 27 in his nightly video address.
“It is obvious that any neutral flag of Russian athletes is stained with blood,” he added.
Zelenskyy’s comments came after the IOC announced in a statement on January 25 that Russian and Belarusian athletes would be permitted to compete as neutrals — athletes who do not represent their nations — at the Paris Olympics.
In its statement, the IOC said “no athlete should be prevented from competing just because of their passport.” The caveat is that the athletes must not have actively supported the war in Ukraine, per the statement.
“Governments must not decide which athletes can participate in which competition and which athletes cannot,” the statement said.
The IOC told Insider that the final call regarding Russian and Belarusian athletes will be decided after consultations with International Sports Federations, which are non-governmental organizations that supervise sports globally.
“Further details can only be defined after these consultations have taken place,” the IOC said in an email.
Ukraine has said that it could boycott the games if Russian and Belarusian athletes are given the chance to participate, per the BBC.
In a Facebook post on Saturday, Zelenskyy wrote that Olympic principles and war “fundamentally oppose each other.”
“Russia must stop aggression and terror, and only after that it will be possible to talk about Russian participation in the context of the Olympic movement,” Zelenskyy’s post read, translated from Ukrainian to English.
The post also included photos of Ukrainian athletes training in facilities damaged in the war. The post has since garnered 23,000 likes and been shared 2,900 times.
The president’s post was reposted by Ukraine’s sports minister Vadim Gutzeit, who added, “320 sports facilities have already been affected by the war in our state. Questions to the world: Are these equal conditions for fair fight at international competitions?”
Zelenskyy’s comments came as the Russian military continued to launch attacks on the Ukrainian city of Kherson into the night on Sunday, after attacks during the day left at least three people dead, per the BBC.
The 2024 Olympics in Paris are slated to kick off on July 26, 2024.
Source: I N S I D E R
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