Russian Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin said on Saturday that calls from ministers of more than 30 countries to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes from the 2024 Olympics were unacceptable, Kremlin controlled news agency TASS has reported.
“This is a direct interference of ministers in the activities of independent international sports organisations, an attempt to dictate the conditions for the participation of athletes in international competitions, which is absolutely unacceptable,” Matytsin is quoted as saying.
A group of 35 countries, including the United States, Germany and Australia, will demand that Russian and Belarusian athletes are banned from the 2024 Olympics, Lithuania’s sports minister said on Friday, deepening the uncertainty over the Paris Games.
The RIA Novosti news agency also reported that Matytsin described as “humiliating” a proposal by Polish Sports Minister Kamil Bortniczuk to create a team of refugees that would include Russian and Belarusian dissidents.
Ukraine says its athletes may boycott the Paris Olympics next year if Russia and Belarus are allowed to take part.
While Russia kills and terrorises, representatives of the terrorist state have no place at sports and Olympic competitions. And it cannot be covered up with some pretended neutrality or a white flag. The mere presence of representatives of the terrorist state is a manifestation of violence and lawlessness.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has said that Belarus and Russia should be banned “while the war continues” in Ukraine.
Main image: Par Jacques Paquier — Anne Hidalgo, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90051683
