Olympics: Volodymyr Zelenskyy tells summit ‘no place’ for Russia in Paris

IOC president Thomas Bach (L) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have opposing views on how Russian athletes should be treated at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Photos / Photosport, AP

Russian athletes have “no place” at next year’s Paris Olympics while their country’s invasion of Ukraine continues, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told a summit of sports officials from 36 countries on Saturday.

The International Olympic Committee argues it would be discriminatory to exclude Russia and ally Belarus from sports ahead of the 2024 Paris Games. With qualifying in many sports already underway, the IOC wants athletes from those countries to compete in a neutral capacity without national symbols - however, Zelenskyy disagrees.

“While Russia kills and terrorises, representatives of the terrorist state have no place at sports and Olympic competitions,” Zelenskyy told the summit in an opening address by video link, according to a transcript issued by his office.

“And it cannot be covered up 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 recognised. And this must be recognised, in particular, at the level of the International Olympic Committee,” Zelenskyy said. “The International Olympic Committee needs honesty. Honesty it has unfortunately lost. Honesty that will help stop Russian terror and bring peace closer.”

Zelenskyy made surprise visits to Britain and France this week, pushing for fighter jets to battle Russian invaders in a dramatic speech to the British Parliament.

Saturday’s summit meeting, 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.

“There is danger here that the world wishes to move on and back to business as usual,” Frazer said. “However, the situation in Ukraine has not changed since the IOC’s initial decision last February on banning Russian and Belarusian athletes from competition.”

Assistant US Secretary of State Lee Satterfield said at the summit that the US government still supports the multinational statements it signed onto over the last year. Those have called on sports organisations that allow Russians to participate to ensure the Russians compete as neutral athletes and to ban the Russian flag. Both statements, however, were drafted well before the IOC began pushing in January to find a pathway for some Russian athletes into the Paris Games.

Satterfield also told the summit the State Department would consult with the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee on next steps and seek more clarity from the IOC about its position, according to an agency spokesperson.

In a letter sent to IOC president Thomas Bach on Friday, Ukrainian Sports Minister Vadym Guttsait said allowing Russians to compete would further traumatise athletes affected by the war.

“The participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes in international competitions will make it impossible for Ukrainian athletes to take part in them, because each of the Ukrainians suffered from Russian aggression in one way or another: They lost their relatives and friends, lost their homes, received psychological trauma, lost the opportunity to do what they love,” wrote Guttsait, who also leads the Ukrainian Olympic Committee.

Ukraine has previously made public a letter from Bach to Guttsait saying that “threatening a boycott ... goes against the fundamentals of the Olympic Movement and the principles we stand for.”

Political leaders of Ukraine’s nearby allies in Poland and the Baltic states have said there could be Olympic boycotts if the IOC forges ahead with its plan. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has said Russian and Belarusian athletes should be barred from the Olympics in her city if the war is still going on by then.

Hidalgo traveled to Kyiv on Friday to meet Mayor Vitali Klitschko and said she would “do everything” to convince the IOC. Russian athletes previously competed at the Olympics without national symbols as punishment for doping cases, and using a similar approach to deal with a war is not appropriate, Hidalgo argued.

The IOC, which last year backed excluding Russians and Belarusians from sporting events on safety grounds, also faces challenges from within its own movement. It has given the federations running individual Olympic sports the final say on the details of readmitting Russian and Belarusian athletes. The sports could impose different rules and move at different speeds, or challenge the IOC’s authority entirely.

Olympic qualifiers are under way in some sports and start soon in many more. That leaves federations grappling with how to reshape a process that they thought was finalised years ago.

It could also be up to them to implement the IOC’s plan to leave out Russian and Belarusian athletes deemed to be “actively supporting the war in Ukraine.” The IOC hasn’t defined what constitutes support, while Russian officials have called it discriminatory and demanded the Olympic body scrap that condition entirely.

Ukraine is particularly concerned that Russian athletes from military sports clubs or who hold military ranks could compete.

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