Ukrainians will not take part in the qualifying events in which Russians will be present

Ukraine had already said it was ready to boycott the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games (JOP), in the event of the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes. A sign that the threat is serious, Kiev announced on Thursday March 30 that its athletes are not authorized to participate in the qualifying events for the JOP in which Russians would take part, while the federations which do not submit to the measure could , she, to be dispossessed of their status.

The decision, announced by Oleh Nemchinov, Secretary General of the Government and member of the Ukrainian National Olympic Committee (NOC), comes as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on March 28 reaffirmed its desire to reinstate the athletes of the two countries, banned from world sport after the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and banned from most international competitions.

The IOC’s proposal, which concerns only “individual” athletes, is accompanied by a series of criteria intended to guarantee “their neutrality” with regard to the regimes in place in Moscow and Minsk. Thursday, the French sports minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, had tried to temporize: these recommendations “do not prejudge anything” of the presence of the Russians and Belarusians at the Games in the summer of 2024. The president of the body, Thomas Bach, had indeed insisted on the fact that nothing had been decided concerning the Parisian deadline, referring its arbitration “at the appropriate time, in its sole discretion, and without being bound by the results of qualifying competitions”.

Thomas Bach hardens the tone

Still, the German apparently gave himself absolute latitude on this issue. Crowned Olympic champion in team foil at the 1976 Games in Montreal, he never hesitates to invoke his personal case when it comes to the independence of sport in the face of political interference: he who had been deprived of defending his title, four years later in Moscow, because of the boycott imposed by the United States and its allies. “If governments decided on the possible participation of such an athlete in such a competition, it would be the end of world sport as we know it today”he said again on Tuesday.

Before toughening up on Thursday, judging “deplorable” that several European chancelleries interfere with the Russian presence in competition. A double standard, he said, while some “seventy armed conflicts [sont] in progress in the world » and that unlike the war in Ukraine they do not invite themselves into the Olympic sphere. Several Western countries and athletes have argued that it would be absurd for the next Olympics to take place without a Ukrainian delegation. Poland and the Baltic States are also ready to skip the meeting.

Oleh Nemchinov recognizes that the measure decided on Thursday could deprive his compatriots of living one of their dreams. But he believes it is the price to pay: “Yesterday I attended the funeral of a good friend of mine who devoted more than twenty years to athletics and who died in the Kharkiv regionhe said. He voluntarily went to war. And he didn’t serve in the kitchen, so to speak. » A way of saying that a year after the IOC’s recommendation on banishment, nothing on the ground justifies the reversal of its position.

Ukrainian rights ignored

The Olympic body is justified by the desire not to discriminate against athletes on the basis of their passport – a component of the Olympic Charter –, and by the recommendations of the United Nations, which is based on the work of the special rapporteur in the field of cultural rights Alexandra Xanthaki, in charge of evaluating the reintegration of Russia and Belarus.

On Thursday, during an online press conference, human rights academic Patricia Wiater argued that the rights of Ukrainian athletes have been ignored in this case. The proposed readmission conditions “Are they proportionate and are they sufficient to prevent [que] sporting events are not used for war propaganda purposes? »she wondered during this meeting, in which Ukrainian athletes and other nationalities took part.

“Unfortunately, this was not addressed either in the IOC statement or by the special rapporteur, although it is very important”lamented M.^me Wiater, at the origin of the opinion of the German Olympic Committee, favors him the banishment of Russian and Belarusian athletes.