PERM, October 19. /TASS/. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) considers inviting athletes to take part in the Olympics a 'privilege' instead of the unconditional right of the world’s best athletes, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.
"Owing to some executives of the present-day International Olympic Committee we have learned that an invitation to the Games is not the unconditional right of the best athletes, but some sort of a 'privilege' that can be granted not for sports merits, but by some political gestures that have nothing to do with sports, and that the Games can be used as a tool of political pressure against people who have nothing to do with politics," Putin said at the 11th International Forum 'Russia - Country of Sports' hosted by the Russian city of Perm this week.
The Russian president said he regretted that "a lot has changed and a lot was lost," since the times of Pierre de Coubertin and Alexei Butovsky, who were at the roots of the Olympic Movement’s revival early last century.
Putin added that the IOC’s current approach to Russian athletes is "ethnic discrimination."
"The Games can be used as a tool of political pressure against people who have nothing to do with politics, as well as a tool of blatant and, in fact, racist, ethnic discrimination," he said.
The International Sports Forum ‘Russia - Country of Sports’ has been held in various cities across Russia since 2009. This year the forum is hosted by Perm, the country’s second-largest city in the Urals, between October 19 and 22.
On October 12, the IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) until further notice after the Russian organization included the Olympic councils of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions as its members.
IOC sanctions against Russia
On February 28, 2022, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued recommendations to international sports federations to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from taking part in international tournaments, citing Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine as the reason.
Following the IOC’s recommendations in late February 2022, the majority of global sports federations decided to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from all international sports tournaments.
In late March, 2023, the IOC recommended 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.