Ukraine’s Zelenskiy presses drive to keep Russia out of Paris Olympics

FILE PHOTO: The Olympic rings are pictured in front of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, May 17, 2022. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that allowing Russia to compete in the 2024 Paris Games is tantamount to showing that “terror is acceptable.”

Zelenskiy said he had sent a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron as part of a campaign to get Russian athletes out of the Paris Games.

“The effort by the International Olympic Committee to bring Russian athletes back to the Olympics is an attempt to tell the whole world that terror is acceptable,” Zelenskiy said in a nightly video address.

“It’s as if you can turn a blind eye to what Russia is doing in Kherson, Kharkiv, Bakhmut and Avdiivka,” he said, pointing to areas that had been burned by Russian forces.

Russia, he said, was not allowed to “use (the Games) or any other sporting event as propaganda for state aggression or chauvinism”.

The International Olympic Committee said last week that it had accepted a proposal from the Olympic Council of Asia for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in Asia.

Zelenskiy spoke to Macron last week and has since launched a “marathon of honesty” to keep Russian athletes out of the Paris Games. On Saturday, he said there is no neutrality in sports when his country’s athletes fight and die in battle.

In his latest comments, Zelenskiy said that the 20th century had many mistakes that led to terrible tragedies.

“And there was a major Olympic mistake,” he said, referring to the staging of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin when the Nazis came to power. “The Olympic movement and terrorist states must not cross paths.”

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