Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD: The Olympic committees of five Nordic nations have joined calls to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes from the Paris 2024 Games.
In a joint statement, the committees of Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark said: “Now is not the right time to consider their return.”
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has said Russians and Belarusians may be allowed to compete as neutrals with Ukraine threatening to boycott the games if that plan goes ahead.
Last week, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland all opposed, including Russian and Belarusian athletes, who were banned following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year.
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On Tuesday, the Nordic Olympic and Paralympic Committees and Confederations of Sports said they wanted to reaffirm their steadfast support for the Ukrainian people and the demand for peace. They said that the situation with the war in Ukraine had not changed and that now was not the right time to consider their return.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the IOC called on federations to exclude athletes from Russia and Belarus and banned the countries from the Winter Paralympics in March 2022. However, athletes were still allowed to compete under a neutral flag.
Further sanctions were also announced across other sports, including football, rugby, Tennis, Formula 1, cycling and swimming.
However, the IOC said last month that it would “explore a pathway” for athletes from the two nations to compete at Paris 2024 – a move that was criticised in a joint statement from Athletes for Ukraine and Global Athlete, which said IOC’s decision shows it “endorses Russia’s brutal war and invasion of Ukraine”. The UK also condemned the plan calling it a “world away from the reality of war”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that allowing Russia to compete in Paris would show that “terror is somehow acceptable”.
