Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo says there must be no Russian delegation allowed on the Paris Olympics subsequent yr if Moscow continues its conflict in opposition to Ukraine.
Hidalgo beforehand stated Russian opponents may participate beneath a impartial flag however she backpedaled on Tuesday in an interview with French media France Info.
Acknowledging {that a} closing choice belongs to the International Olympic Committee, Hidalgo stated she needs Russian athletes shall be banned “as long as there is this war, this Russian aggression on Ukraine.”
“It is not possible to parade as if nothing had happened, to have a delegation that comes to Paris while the bombs continue to rain down on Ukraine.”
Hidalgo’s feedback got here after Ukraine’s sports activities minister final week renewed a menace to boycott the video games if Russia and Belarus are allowed to compete and stated Kyiv would foyer others to hitch.
No nation has up to now declared it’ll boycott the 2024 Summer Games. But Ukraine received help from Poland, the Baltic nations and Denmark, who pushed again in opposition to an IOC plan to permit delegations from Russia and ally Belarus to compete in Paris as “neutral athletes” with out flags or anthems.
Hidalgo stated she would discover it “totally indecent” if Russian athletes competed within the French capital beneath these phrases. But she left the door open for Russian dissidents who don’t help President Vladimir Putin’s actions to parade in Paris “under a refugee banner.”
Russia has cautiously welcomed the IOC’s choice to offer it a path to the Olympics however calls for it drop a situation that would depart out these athletes deemed to be “actively supporting the war in Ukraine.”
Russian Olympic Committee head Stanislav Pozdnyakov, who was a teammate of Ukraine’s Huttsait on the 1992 Olympics, referred to as that facet discriminatory. The IOC, which beforehand really helpful excluding Russia and Belarus from world sports activities on security grounds, now argues it can not discriminate in opposition to them purely primarily based on citizenship.
Asked by The Associated Press in regards to the boycott threats and the IOC plan, Paris 2024 organizing committee head Tony Estanguet stated he wouldn’t remark “about political decisions.”
If the IOC proposal takes impact, Paris could be the fourth straight Olympics the place Russian athletes have competed with out the nationwide flag or anthem. The Russian groups on the Winter Olympics in 2018 and 2022 and the Summer Olympics in 2021 had been caught up within the fallout from state-sponsored doping.
The final time a number of international locations boycotted an Olympics was in 1988, when North Korea and others refused to attend the Summer Games in South Korea.
