"
The attempt to dictate the conditions for the participation of athletes in international competitions is absolutely unacceptable (...) We are currently seeing an undisguised desire to destroy the unity of international sport
", declared the Russian minister of Sports, Oleg Matytsin, quoted by Russian press agencies.
On Friday, Mr. Zelensky said that the presence of Russian athletes at the Paris Games would be "
a sign of violence and impunity
", trying during a meeting to convince sports ministers from several countries.
Those calling for exclusion "
would do better to take care of sport in their own countries and do everything so that sport is an ambassador of peace and helps to build bridges between peoples
", commented Saturday Mr. Matytsin.
He assured that "
nobody
" had called for the exclusion of American athletes from the 2004 Olympics, after Washington's invasion of Iraq.
Read alsoJO 2024: the mayor of Paris does not want Russian athletes "as long as there is war" in Ukraine
Ukraine is up against the possibility of a presence of Russian and Belarusian athletes at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, including under a neutral banner, envisaged by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) without anything having yet been decided in this direction.
She threatened to boycott the competition.
The President of the IOC, Thomas Bach, denounced in a letter dated January 31 this Ukrainian intransigence, which according to him goes "
against the fundamentals of the Olympic movement
".
Ukrainian hostility to the presence of Russian athletes is supported by kyiv's traditional allies such as the United Kingdom and Poland.
The United States, on the other hand, declared themselves in favor of the compromise of participation under a neutral banner.
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