Russian and Belarusian athletes will be required to be suspended from participation in the Olympic Games, which will be held in 2024, Reuters reports . Among others, the United States, Germany and Australia will protest. This was announced on February 10 by the Minister of Sports of Lithuania.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed 35 European ministers earlier with a demand to ban athletes from Belarus and Russia from participating in the Games. He said that 228 Ukrainian athletes and coaches were killed as a result of Russian aggression.
“If there is an Olympic sport with assassinations and rocket strikes, you know which national team will take first place. Terror and Olympism are two opposites, they cannot be combined,” Zelensky said at the meeting.
British Sports Minister Lucy Fraser said on Twitter that the meeting was very productive. “I have made the UK position very clear: as long as Putin continues his barbaric war, Russia and Belarus should not be represented at the Olympics,” she wrote.
“We know that 70% of Russian athletes are military. I consider it unacceptable for such people to participate in the Olympic Games in the current situation, when fair play obviously means nothing to them,” Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said earlier. At the same time, the Minister of Sports of Poland, Kamil Bortnichuk, noted that instead of a complete exclusion of athletes, a "group of refugees" could be allowed to participate, which would include Russian and Belarusian dissidents.
At the moment, the IOC has allowed Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete as neutral athletes. He stated that the boycott would violate the Olympic Charter and that its inclusion of Russians and Belarusians was based on a UN resolution against discrimination within the Olympic Movement.
