MOSCOW, December 23. /TASS/. A decision of the United States to manifest a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in China was ‘incorrect and unacceptable,’ Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.
"This decision is unacceptable and incorrect," he said during his traditional end-of-the-year news conference in Moscow. "I have spoken with one of the former US presidents and he told me that the boycotts of the Olympics in Los Angeles and Moscow were a big mistake, but the United States keeps stepping on the same garden rakes."
"What are the prerequisites for it? Attempts to restrain the further development of China," Putin said.
Russian President Putin held his customary year-end news conference on December 23. Only 507 reporters were invited this year since restrictive measures to stop the spread of COVID-19 are in effect. In 2020, Putin's press conference ran for roughly four-and-a-half hours, with the Russian head of state having fielded 60 questions.
On December 6, Washington announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics, saying that no US officials would attend the Games. The Biden administration later informed its allies and partners overseas of the move, leaving them the right to decide for themselves on attending the Beijing Olympics.
Demands for boycotting the Beijing Winter Olympics were earlier voiced by politicians from Canada, Norway, and the United States as well as by representatives of about 200 human rights organizations around the globe over China’s alleged human rights abuses in the Xinjiang autonomous region.
In response, China slammed the US decision as a political ploy that ran counter to the Olympic Charter and vowed to take retaliatory measures. Australia and Japan joined the US diplomatic boycott of the Games. New Zealand, in turn, said that its officials would not travel to Beijing due to the coronavirus pandemic.
2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing
The 2022 Winter Olympic Games in the Chinese capital of Beijing are scheduled to be held from February 4-20, while the Paralympic Winter Games will be held on March 4-13.
During the 128th IOC session in Kuala Lumpur on July 31, 2015, Beijing was chosen to host the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games making the Chinese capital the first city ever to host both the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games (in 2008) as well as the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games (in 2022).
Beijing won the right to host the 2022 Olympics and Paralympics in a tight race, beating Kazakhstan’s Almaty in 2015, by chalking up 44 votes against its rival’s 40.