The row over Russian athletes’ possible participation in the Olympic Games has intensified after the head of the International Olympic Committee said that while he shared the “grief and human suffering” of Ukrainian athletes, national governments should not decide who takes part in international sporting events.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has repeatedly demanded that Russian and Belarusian athletes be barred from the 2024 Olympic Games and on Friday described their potential presence in Paris as a “manifestation of violence”.
Speaking at the World Ski Championships in France, Thomas Bach said Ukraine’s athletes “know how much we share their grief, their human suffering and all the effort we’re taking to help them” after Russia’s invasion almost 12 months ago.
However, he added: “It is not up to governments to decide who can take part in which sports competitions, because this would be the end of international sports competitions and world championships and the Olympic Games as we know it.”
The Ukrainian government has reacted furiously to the IOC’s announcement last month that it was exploring a “pathway” that might allow Russian and Belarusian competitors to take part in the Paris Games under a neutral flag.
Kyiv, which says at least 228 Ukrainian athletes and coaches have been killed in Russia’s invasion, argues Moscow will seek political advantage from the participation of Russian athletes and has threatened to pull out if they are allowed to take part.
“This cannot be covered up with some pretended neutrality or a white flag,” Zelenskiy told a virtual summit of sports ministers on Friday. “Russia is now a country that stains everything with blood, even the white flag.”
Bach insisted on Sunday the mission of the Olympic Games was “a peace mission”. History would show “who is doing more for peace, the ones who try to keep lines open and communicate, or the ones who want to isolate and divide”, he said.
The IOC aimed to “find a solution that is giving justice to the mission of sport, which is to unify, not to contribute to more confrontation, more escalation”, he said. “We’re supporting the 3,000 members of the Ukrainian Olympic community to have a strong Ukrainian team in Paris”.
Bach said there had been no discussion so far of Zelenskiy’s invitation to him to visit the Ukrainian frontline and see “neutrality does not exist”, adding that talks about Russian and Belarusian athletes’ potential participation in Paris 2024 had not yet begun either.
The UN’s human rights council had “serious concerns” that any exclusion of athletes “only because of their passports” would violate their rights, he said, while several sports, such as tennis, already allowed Russians to take part under a neutral flag.
Several European states, including the Czech Republic, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Poland, oppose Russian and Belarusian participation and a few – notably Latvia, Estonia and Poland – have said they would consider a boycott of the Games.
Visiting Ukraine last week, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, reversed her previous position and said she was against Russian athletes taking part as long as the war continued. The French government has yet to formulate a clear stance.
