Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday blasted the International Olympic Committee (IOC) over its plan to include Russian athletes in the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympics.
Despite Zelenskyy's calls to exclude Russia from next year’s Summer Olympics, the IOC on Wednesday said it aimed to pursue a pathway for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete as"neutral athletes" who"in no way represent their state or any other organisation in their country."
"No athlete should be prevented from competing just because of their passport," Thomas Bach, President of the IOC, said Wednesday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gestures as he speaks during a joint press conference with his Finnish counterpart following their talks in Kyiv, on January 24, 2023, amid Russia's military invasion on Ukraine.The IOC noted that its recommendation mirrors a similar decision in 1992, when it allowed athletes from the former Yugoslavia—which faced sanctions by the United Nations—to participate as independent Olympic participants at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
"Olympic principles and war fundamentally oppose each other." the president of the war-torn country wrote in a Saturday morning post.""If we are not heard, I do not rule out the possibility that
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