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French Interior Ministry ignores Russian volunteers banned from working at Olympics

In the text of the letter, the volunteers recalled that they had been "selected by the Organizing Committee of the 2023 Olympic and Paralympic Games (for the 2024 Paris Olympics), each one given a mission" and had already received visas, bought tickets to France and were ready to start working

MOSCOW, May 19. /TASS/. The French Interior Ministry has not responded since the beginning of May to a collective letter of Russian volunteers who were banned from working at the Olympic Games in Paris, one of the volunteers told TASS.

Earlier, TASS reported that the French authorities rejected applications for accreditation to the Olympic Games from more than 20 Russians who wanted to go to Paris as volunteers.

"In early May, we wrote a collective letter to French Interior Minister [Gerald Darmanin], which was delivered to the ministry by Russian volunteers living in this country," the volunteer told TASS. "More than two weeks have passed and there has been no response. But we continue to hope that the ban on Russian volunteers will be lifted and we will be able to join like-minded people from other countries for the Paris Olympics. We’ve worked with these people more than one Games and have become a friendly family."

In the text of the letter, the volunteers recalled that they had been "selected by the Organizing Committee of the 2023 Olympic and Paralympic Games (for the 2024 Paris Olympics), each one given a mission" and had already received visas, bought tickets to France and were ready to start working. However, on April 29, 2024, "volunteers with Russian citizenship received the letters with the refusal of accreditation and participation in the volunteer program for security reasons." The Russians insisted that they were "ready to volunteer during the Games with good intentions" and "pose no danger" because their common goal was "to promote the values of the Olympic Games and the ideals of the Olympic movement." The volunteers asked French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin to reconsider the ministry's decision to ban them from the Games and promised to "strictly comply with all French laws, European Union laws, the Olympic Charter and the Olympic and Paralympic Volunteer Charter." The Russians also pointed out that neither of them "has ever broken the law or been prosecuted.".

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