‘No place’ for Russians at Olympics amid invasion of Ukraine, Zelenskyy tells summit

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Russian athletes “have no place” at next year’s Paris Olympics as his country’s invasion of Ukraine continues, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told a summit of sports officials from 30 countries on Friday.

The International Olympic Committee said it would be discriminatory to exclude Russia and its ally Belarus from sports ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympics. With qualification in many sports already underway, the IOC wants athletes from those countries to compete in a neutral capacity without national symbols.

“While Russia kills and terrorizes, representatives of terrorist states have no place in sports and Olympic competitions,” Zelenskyy said at the summit in an opening address via video link, according to a transcript published by his office.

“And it cannot be covered with some pretended neutrality or a white flag. Because Russia is now a country that stains everything with blood – even the white flag. It must be recognized. And this must be recognized, especially, at the level of the International Olympic Committee,” said Zelenskyy. “The International Olympic Committee needs honesty. Unfortunately, honesty is gone. Honesty is what will help stop Russian terror and bring peace.”

Zelenskyy made a surprise visit to Britain and France on Wednesday, urging fighter jets to fight Russian invaders in a dramatic speech to the British Parliament.

Friday’s summit, which was held online and chaired by British culture secretary Lucy Frazer, took place on a day of intense missile and drone strikes by Russian forces against Ukraine.

“President Zelenskyy told the British Parliament this week about the suffering that many Ukrainians still feel. While he did so, the IOC continued to ignore its international allies working for peace and ignored how the Olympics would provide. [Russian president Vladimir] Putin is the perfect platform to promote Russia and legitimize his illegal war,” Frazer said in a statement Thursday.

The presence of the Russian Olympics could be even more traumatic for Ukrainians

Ukrainian Sports Minister Vadym Guttsait said allowing Russians to compete would traumatize athletes affected by the war.

“The participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes in international competitions will make it impossible for Ukrainian athletes to participate, because every Ukrainian suffers from Russian aggression in one way or another: Losing relatives and friends, losing their homes, receiving psychological trauma, losing the opportunity to do what they love, Guttsait, who also heads the Ukrainian Olympic Committee, wrote in a letter to IOC president Thomas Bach and other Olympic leaders published Thursday.

Ukraine had previously disclosed a letter from Bach to Guttsait saying that “threatened boycotts … go against the very foundations of the Olympic Movement and the principles we live by.”

Political leaders of Ukraine’s allies in Poland and the Baltic states said there would be a boycott of the Olympics if the IOC went ahead with the plan. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said Russian and Belarusian athletes should be banned from the Olympics in her city if the war continues.

Hidalgo traveled to Kyiv on Thursday to meet Mayor Vitali Klitschko and said he would “do everything” to convince the IOC. Russian athletes before competing in the Olympics without the national symbol as punishment for doping cases, and using the same approach to deal with the war is not appropriate, Hidalgo argued.

A woman speaks to a French mayor during a meeting.
While the final decision rests with the International Olympic Committee, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said she wants Russian athletes banned from next year’s Summer Olympics “as long as there is this war, Russian aggression in Ukraine.” (Thibault Camus/Associated Press/File)

Challenges between sports federations

The IOC, which last year backed the exclusion of Russia and Belarus from the sporting event on security grounds, is also facing challenges from its own movement. This has given the federations that run individual Olympic sports the final say on the details of the reopening of Russian and Belarusian athletes. sport can impose different rules and move at a different speed, or challenge the authority of the IOC entirely.

Archery’s governing body said last week it was “impossible” to allow neutral athletes to compete in 2023, including in the Olympic qualifiers. The IOC’s plan for Russia and Belarus to qualify for the Olympics through competition in Asia, rather than Europe, was also unacceptable, he added. Track and field’s governing body has its own restrictions on the Russian team over doping and its president, Olympian Sebastian Coe, has said his preferred solution is to get Russia “out of Ukraine.”

Olympic qualification takes place in some sports and starts quickly in many others. That leaves the federation to grapple with how to reshape the process that they thought was done last year.

It may even go as far as he implements the IOC’s plan to leave out Russian and Belarusian athletes deemed “actively supporting the war in Ukraine.” The IOC has yet to define what constitutes support, while Russian officials have called it discriminatory and demanded the Olympic body remove the condition.

Ukraine is concerned that Russian athletes from military sports clubs or those with military ranks can compete.

“In Russia, sport is a political element, a powerful propaganda, in this case the promotion of war,” Guttsait wrote to Bach.

Many national Olympic organizers have taken the IOC line, but some like Ukraine and Latvia have said they would rather boycott than compete with Russian athletes. Five sports bodies in the Nordic countries said on Tuesday that they wanted to ban athletes and officials from Russia and Belarus.

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