PARIS, France: Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo Saturday said that Belarusian and Russian athletes “were not welcome” at the Olympics being held here from July 26 until August 11 this year.
“I want to tell Russian and Belarusian athletes that they are not welcome in Paris and to tell Ukrainian athletes and all the Ukrainian people that we support them very strongly,” the mayor said in a video posted by United News, a Ukrainian YouTube channel.
The Paris mayor made her comments while on a Kyiv trip when she visited a training centre for Ukrainian athletes.
Russian athletes can compete in the Paris Olympics but only as neutrals.
Both Belarus and Russia have been banned from taking part in the Olympics opening ceremony which will be staged on the River Seine in the city centre.
In response, the Russian government launched a tirade on the IOC, claiming that the IOC’s restrictions on Russian athletes were “neo-Nazism.”
The IOC last year suspended Russia from the 2024 Games, but gave Russian athletes the green light to compete as a neutral nation unless they didn’t actively support the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
