KAZAN, May 19. /TASS/. Some countries are trying to get Russian athletes to change their national affiliation through sinister means, President of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) Stanislav Pozdnyakov said on Friday.

"The phenomenon of sports is that it plays a crucial role in diverse cooperation, in social progress," Pozdnyakov said speaking at the international economic forum Russia - Islamic World: KazanForum 2023.

"But instead of taking advantage of these unprecedented opportunities in sports today, they are trying to put up walls, dividing athletes into suitable and unsuitable according to their far-fetched criteria. They claim the right to sort people according to their origin and passport," the ROC president continued.

"No one ever vested sports organizations with such a right; it is not in their jurisdiction," Pozdnyakov stressed.

"This also includes attempts to encourage Russian athletes in various ways to change their [national] affiliation, to tempt them with dubious prospects," the Russian sports official noted.

"But without the approval of the Executive Committee of the ROC most athletes who can be enticed in this way to other countries will not be able to compete in the Olympic Games in the next few years," the ROC president said.

"Under such circumstances, one thing is clear: sports is increasingly being employed as a tool in the fight for a geopolitical advantage across the world. And the initiating side of this sporting race of hostility openly relies on the ideology of neocolonialism, puts forward neoliberal rhetoric and keeps pushing sports into the abyss of destruction," Pozdnyakov stated.

"It is important that regarding this issue we maintain a stance of total denial; we proceed from the fact that with respect to athletes of any jurisdiction, the same non-discriminatory criteria should be applied," he said. "International sports should give everyone the same rights and obligations."

At its session on January 25, 2023, the IOC Executive Board put forward a proposal to permit individual athletes from Russia and Belarus to take part in international sports tournaments but only under certain conditions.

Specifically, athletes from the two countries should not be "actively supporting" Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine and must compete under a neutral status. Russia and Belarus were also banned from participating in international team events.

Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) President Stanislav Pozdnyakov called these recommendations absolutely unacceptable as they would lead to a split in Russian sports. Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov slammed the IOC’s recommendations as discriminatory.