MOSCOW, December 15. /TASS/. The Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) should be fully reinstated to the Olympic movement, ROC President Stanislav Pozdnyakov told reporters.
"We call on our colleagues in Lausanne to disavow their recommendations and reinstate the ROC as a full member of the Olympic movement and return to the principles outlined by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the Olympic movement," Pozdnyakov said.
"Today, I assessed the actions of our colleagues in Lausanne, whose unconstructive and contradictory position towards our organization continues to sow divisions inside the big Olympic family, threatening its credibility, which we strongly oppose. Unfortunately, senior IOC officials have been unable [to make the right decision concerning the ROC] due to the pressure the committee is facing from its Western sponsors. This pressure now supersedes common sense, but sooner or later it will once again prevail at the IOC," the ROC president noted.
On October 12, the IOC suspended the ROC until further notice over the move to include the Olympic councils of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions into the national committee. Russia appealed the decision at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.