OIympics Chief Swats Away Zelensky’s Plea to Ban Russia: ‘Not Up to Governments to Decide Who Can Take Part’

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The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call for Russia to be excluded from next year’s Olympic Games.

Zelensky spoke on Friday before a virtual summit of international sports ministers, where he renewed his call for the IOC to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes from the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. The Ukrainian president declared “representatives of the terrorist state have no place at sports and Olympic competition,” and he asked the member nations at the summit to join him in demanding this ban from the IOC.

Here’s an excerpt of Zelensky’s remarks, via the Associated Press.

[This] 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 recognized. And this must be recognized, in particular, at the level of the International Olympic Committee. The International Olympic Committee needs honesty. Honesty it has unfortunately lost. Honesty that will help stop Russian terror and bring peace closer.

Even though the IOC banned Russia and Belarus from international sporting events when the invasion of Ukraine first began, IOC President Thomas Bach spoke with reporters on Sunday and shut down the idea of blocking them from the Paris games. The Guardian reports Bach offered sympathy for the “grief and human suffering” of Ukranians, but insisted that banning Russia and Belarus from the Olympics would contradict the Games’ interest in fostering peace and international competition.

“It is not up to governments to decide who can take part in which sports competitions, because this would be the end of international sports competitions and world championships and the Olympic Games as we know it,” Bach said. “History will show who is doing more for peace. The ones who try to keep lines open, to communicate, or the ones who want to isolate or divide.”