{"id":1181,"date":"2023-01-25T09:31:42","date_gmt":"2023-01-25T10:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/?p=1181"},"modified":"2025-06-20T11:02:53","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T11:02:53","slug":"ukraine-calls-for-complete-olympic-ban-on-russians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/25\/ukraine-calls-for-complete-olympic-ban-on-russians\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine calls for complete Olympic ban on Russians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Athletes from the country may be permitted to compete as neutrals at Paris 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has called on his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron to prevent Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing at next year\u2019s Olympic Games in Paris.<\/p>\n<p>There have been significant restrictions imposed upon Russian sports since the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued sanctions last year shortly after the onset of the military operation in Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>However, the IOC has appeared to be considering a return to the international sporting fold of athletes from both countries in Asia-based qualification events for Paris 2024, provided that they compete as neutrals and without national symbols such as flags and anthems.<\/p>\n<p>Zelensky held discussions with IOC president Thomas Bach in December in which he said he was \u201c<em>upset<\/em>\u201d at the potential Olympic inclusions of Russian and Belarusian athletes \u2013 and he echoed this stance in a discussion with the French leader.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>I particularly emphasized that athletes from Russia should have no place at the Olympic Games in Paris<\/em>,\u201d Zelensky wrote on Telegram.<\/p>\n<p>Both Bach and Macron have stated recently that a path needs to be found which respects an athlete\u2019s right to compete regardless of the political stances of their government, with Bach saying last month that \u201c<em>we need to explore ways to overcome this dilemma with regard to athletes\u2019 participation and come back to the sporting merits, and not to political interference<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Macron also noted that \u201c<em>sport should not be politicized<\/em>\u201d and that \u201c<em>athletes from all countries, sometimes including countries at war<\/em>\u201d should be included in global events such as the Olympic Games.<\/p>\n<p>Bach, though, has insisted that the current sanctions against Russia and Belarus must remain in place for the time being but that certain restrictions, such as a ban on the display of Russian or Belarusian flags must \u201c<em>remain firmly in place.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He added: \u201c<em>The question of the participation of athletes is very different from the question of sanctions for their government<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Paris will host the Olympic Games for the first time since 1924 next summer between July 26 and August 11, with the Paralympics starting on August 28.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Athletes from the country may be permitted to compete as neutrals at Paris 2024 Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has called [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1181"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1182,"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions\/1182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}