Less than three weeks out from the start of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee is facing a backlash for keeping Russians in its top ranks.
Shamil Tarpischev and Yelena Isinbaeva, who have been members of the IOC from 1994 and 2016 respectively, have come under particular scrutiny for their links to the Kremlin regime.
The IOC’s refusal to boot the Russians has triggered outrage among Kyiv’s allies, as Moscow’s war on Ukraine grinds menacingly on.
“Russians in the top positions of the IOC not only legitimize Russia’s fight against Ukrainians but also is an official recognition of Russia’s triumph against international law and Olympic principles — excellence, respect and friendship,” Ingrida Šimonytė, Lithuania’s prime minister, told POLITICO.
Isinbaeva, a former pole vaulter, holds the rank of major in the Russian army. While she has insisted the rank is nominal, prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine she was an active campaigner for Putin in multiple presidential elections.
Tarpischev, president of the Russian Tennis Federation, has endorsed the idea of Russian athletes volunteering to fight in Ukraine. Under his leadership, the tennis body has organized multiple tournaments in occupied Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
IOC rules recommend that athletes and sports officials affiliated with the Russian army not be permitted to take part in the Paris 2024 Olympics.
The IOC did not respond to a new request for comment from POLITICO, but a spokesperson previously said that the IOC’s Ethics Commission understands that, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, “neither Ms. [Isinbaeva] nor Mr. Tarpischev have had any contractual links with the Russian military or security agencies nor expressed their support to the invasion or the war in Ukraine.”
Explicit affiliation or not, many argue that Russians’ presence undermines the principles on which the Olympics were founded.
“They need to be excluded,” Zhan Beleniuk, a Ukrainian wrestler, Olympic champion and MP for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party told POLITICO. Russia’s enthusiasm for using athletes in its propaganda means no Russian sports figures can be truly neutral,” he said.
“Russian citizens are agents of hybrid influence in international organizations,” Matviy Bidnyi, the temporary acting minister of youth and sports of Ukraine, told POLITICO. “If the world continues to appease Putin, as European politicians tried to do with Hitler, if they allow Putin to emulate the 1936 Olympics — then it is not difficult to imagine what awaits the world in the coming years.”
Neither Isinbaeva or Tarpischev responded to POLITICO’s requests for comment.
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