Now the recommendations of the International Olympic Committee, which were in force for over a year, have been disavowed, but the announced parameters and criteria for the return of Russian athletes to international competitions are absolutely unacceptable.
Neutral status is obvious discrimination based on nationality, a violation of basic human and civil rights, which international humanitarian experts, including UN human rights experts, have repeatedly pointed out over the past few months. It is indicative that their position has been almost completely ignored.
We also strongly disagree with the application of any additional doping test procedures for Russian athletes. The restrictions imposed by the decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport in the case of WADA v. RUSADA expired last December. At the moment, we are guided by the principles of the World Anti-Doping Code and consider the proposed conditions unreasonable, legally unsound, and excessive.
As for the ban on the participation of Russians in team competitions, here, in our opinion, it is not just discrimination against athletes based on their passport, but also in the disciplines they represent. Depriving at least 30% of our Olympic team members of the opportunity to compete in preliminaries and qualifications without any legal grounds. Such an approach contradicts the Olympic Charter, the UN Charter, humanitarian, civil, and any generally accepted norms.
In this context, when we are actually being asked to agree to put an end to the dream of thousands of athletes to compete for Olympic medals, the proposed restrictions on the posting of certain content on Russian Olympians’ social networks look like a deflection under external political pressure.
The position announced today on the non-admission to international competitions of Russian athletes who are members of military and law enforcement agencies or have contractual relations with them is not just another chapter in the list of gross discriminatory sanctions, as Ms. Alexandra Xanthaki, UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, has explicitly stated recently. We believe that this criterion lays the foundation for an internal conflict in Russian sport, aims to split the community of our athletes, divide them into “acceptable ones” and “others” not only on the basis of their nationality, damage the Russian sports industry as a whole.
Thus, the current admission parameters will in no way facilitate the return of Russian and Belarusian athletes to participation in international competitions. The decisions of the IOC Executive Board are nothing more than a farce, which is not aimed at pacifying the situation, in which the basic principles of the Olympic Charter and the UN Charter are grossly violated.
The Russian Olympic Committee will continue to communicate with colleagues from Lausanne in order to get objective information about the destructiveness of discriminatory measures that destroy the humanitarian and unifying mission of sport.
Given the fact that currently the IOC Executive Board postponed its decision on the participation of our athletes in the Olympic Games, we will monitor the actions of international sports federations regarding the admission of Russians to the competitions.
