The Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) will not boycott this year’s Paris Olympics, its president said on Thursday, despite restrictions on athletes imposed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as punishment for the invasion of Ukraine.
“We will never take the path of boycotting [the Games]. We will always support our athletes,” Stanislav Pozdnyakov, the former Olympic fencer who serves as head of the ROC, said in comments carried by the state RIA news agency.
But we stress that the conditions set by the IOC are illegitimate, unfair and unacceptable.”
The IOC will allow Russians and Belarusians who qualify in their sport for the Paris Games, which run from July 26 to Aug. 11, to take part as neutrals without their countries’ flags, emblems or national anthems.
Neutral athletes will compete only in individual sports and no teams for the two countries will be allowed. Athletes who actively support the war in Ukraine are not eligible, nor are those contracted to the Russian or Belarusian military.
Russia has vigorously protested the restrictions.
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that she preferred that Russians and Belarusians “don’t come.”
“We cannot act as if [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine] did not exist,” she said.
Russians and Belarusians had initially been banned from competing internationally in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, for which Belarus has been used as a staging ground.
