MOSCOW, July 17. /TASS/. Alternative tournaments are no substitute for full-fledged international competition for Russian athletes, who are currently subjected to various sanctions, Russia’s top sports official Mikhail Degtyarev said on Thursday.

"Will any alternative tournaments help our athletes? No, they will not help, because we've been through it before – the Friendship Games in 1984 followed by the Goodwill Games," Degtyarev, the Russian Sports Minister and the president of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), said.

"All of them [athletes] advanced on without a proper level of competition and, to speak figuratively, only pushed back the global level of sports cooperation for years behind, so the alternative [tournament] is not our path to take," he continued.

"Our path stretches along only the full return to the Olympic family," Degtyarev added.

IOC sanctions against Russia, Belarus

On February 28, 2022, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued recommendations to international sports federations to prohibit athletes from Russia and Belarus from participating 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 allowing individual athletes from Russia and Belarus to participate in international sports tournaments, but only under specific 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.

On October 12, 2023, 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.