IOC boss Thomas Bach can imagine that Russia’s athletes will start at the 2024 Olympics. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thinks nothing of it at all. In an interview, he makes it clear to the top German official why.

The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, has spoken out strictly against the participation of athletes from Russia in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, even under a neutral flag. In a conversation with IOC President Thomas Bach, Selenskyj called for the “complete isolation” of Russian athletes, according to a report by the AFP news agency. Bach likes to talk about the allegedly non-political attitude of the sport.

“You can’t try to be neutral when the foundations of peaceful life are being destroyed and universal human values ??are being ignored,” said Zelenskyy, referring to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine: “Since February, 184 Ukrainian athletes have died as a result of Russian actions. ” The only possible reaction is “the complete isolation of the terrorist state on the international stage. And that includes international sporting events.”

Selenskyj was reacting to statements from the USA. The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) announced on Monday that it would support efforts to allow athletes from Russia and Belarus to participate in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, provided they do not fly their colors or flag compete in the country. USOPC Chair Susanne Lyons said in a conference call Monday that the “fabric” of the Olympic movement would be in jeopardy if athletes weren’t given the opportunity to start as neutrals.

“There has been a lot of discussion about whether athletes who happen to be born in Russia and Belarus and hold passports from those countries have the opportunity to compete as clean and neutral athletes,” Lyons said, looking back at a gathering of senior officials under the umbrella of the International Olympic Committees (IOC) last Friday: “There is a great desire for this to happen over time, because our task is to bring the world together in peace through sport.”

The ban was “difficult for the movement to tolerate,” Lyons continued. They want to avoid a return to boycotts like those of the Cold War. “Then the fabric of the Olympic and Paralympic movements falls apart very quickly,” she said.

(This article was first published on Wednesday, December 14, 2022.)