35 Countries Request Russian And Belarusian Athletes Prohibited From Following The 2024 Paris Olympics

Illustration of the 2024 Paris Olympics. (Wikimedia Commons/Anne Jea)

JAKARTA - At least 35 countries, including the United States, Germany, and Australia, will demand that Russian and Belarusian athletes be barred from participating in the 2024 Olympics, Sports Minister Lithuania said on Friday, deepening uncertainty over the Paris Olympics.

The move stepped up pressure on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) desperate to avoid what could be said to be the biggest sporting event in the world, affected by the bloody conflict that has occurred in Ukraine.

"We are heading in a direction that does not require a boycott because all countries agree," Jurgita Siugzdiniene said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took part in an online meeting attended by 35 ministers to discuss calls for the ban, a spokesman for the Lithuanian sports ministry said earlier.

The spokesman said President Zelenskiy's message to the participants was that the principle of neutrality could not be applied to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"It is a privilege to host @ZelenskyyUa today at our summit on Olympic participation," British Sports Minister Lucy Frazer wrote on Twitter.

"It was a very productive meeting between 35 countries, and I made it clear the position of Britain: As long as Putin continued his barbaric war, Russia and Belarus should not be represented at the Olympics."

With the war raging in Ukraine, Baltic countries, Nordic and Polish countries have asked international sports agencies to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing in the Olympics.

Amid the issue of Russia and Belarus's participation, Moscow again launched a wave of attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure in the cities of Kharokiv and Zaporizhia on Friday morning.

"Russian aggression has resulted in the death of 231 Ukrainian athletes and coaches," Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said in a statement after meeting with the Czech IOC chief and national sporting body.

"At the same time, we know that 70 percent of Russian athletes are soldiers. I consider it unacceptable that such people participate in the Olympics in the current situation, when a fair game clearly means nothing to them."

Ukraine threatens to boycott matches if Russian and Belarusian athletes compete.

Such threats have revived memories of boycotts in the 1970s and 1980s during the Cold War era that still haunts the current global Olympic body, and asked Ukraine to cancel it.

However, Polish Sports Minister Kamil Bortniczuk said that the boycott was not yet available for now.

"It's not yet time to talk about boycotts," he told a news conference, saying there were other ways to put pressure on the IOC that could be explored first.

He said most of the participants supported the absolute exception of Russian and Belarusian athletes.

"Most of the voices, except for Greece, France, Japan, are exactly in this tone," he said.

He said forming a refugee team that included dissidents of Russia and Belarus could be a compromise solution.

It is known, the IOC has opened the door for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete as a neutral team.

It said the boycott would violate the Olympic Charter and that the inclusion of Russia and Belarus was based on UN resolutions against discrimination in the Olympic movement.

About 18 months before the competition started, the IOC was desperate to calm the ripples so as not to jeopardize the global peace message.

Meanwhile, Anne Hidalgo, mayor of host Paris, France, said Russian athletes should not take part, with Paris 2024 organizers saying they would comply with the IOC's decision on the matter.