GENEVA — The Russian Olympic Committee will not boycott this year's Paris Games, its president said Thursday, despite restrictions the International Olympic Committee has imposed on athletes as punishment for the invasion of Ukraine.
“We will never choose the path of boycott.” [the Games]. “We will always support our athletes,” Stanislav Pozdnyakov, a former Olympic fencer and chairman of the Republic of China committee, said in comments carried by the state-run RIA news agency. “We emphasize, however, that the conditions set by the IOC are unjust and inequitable, unjust and unjust.” They are unacceptable. ”
The IOC has announced that Russians and Belarusians who have qualified for the Paris Games, to be held from July 26 to August 11, will be allowed to participate as neutral athletes without their national flags, national emblems or national anthems. To give permission.
Athletes from neutral countries can only compete in individual competitions; teams from both countries cannot participate. Athletes who actively support the war in Ukraine and those who have contracts with the Russian or Belarusian armed forces are not eligible.
Russia strongly protested this restriction.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told Reuters on Wednesday that Russians and Belarusians were better off “not coming.”
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russians and Belarusians were initially banned from international matches, and Belarus has been used as a staging area.
In December, President Vladimir Putin cast a shadow over Russian participation in the Paris Games, saying that while he supports Russian participation, he does not want the event to be planned to portray Russian sports as “dying”. If so, he said, people should think carefully about whether they should participate in the first place. .
Following a major doping scandal, Russian athletes have already participated in back-to-back Olympics without a national flag or national anthem.
During the Cold War, the United States boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics because of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union and its allies retaliated by boycotting the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
