A group of 35 countries, including the United States, Germany and Australia, will demand that Russian and Belarusian athletes are banned from the 2024 Olympics, the Lithuanian sports minister said on Friday, deepening the uncertainty over the Paris Games.
The move cranks up the pressure on an International Olympic Committee (IOC) that is desperate to avoid the sporting event being torn asunder by the bloody conflict unfolding in Ukraine.
“We are going in the direction that we would not need a boycott because all countries are unanimous,” Jurgita Siugzdiniene said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy took part in the online meeting attended by 35 ministers to discuss the call for the ban, pointing out 228 Ukrainian athletes and coaches died as a result of the Russian aggression.
“If there’s an Olympics sport with killings and missile strikes, you know which national team would take the first place,” he told the ministers.
“Terror and Olympism are two opposites, they cannot be combined.”
British sports minister Lucy Frazer said on Twitter that the meeting was very productive.
“I made the UK’s position very clear: As long as Putin continues his barbaric war, Russia and Belarus must not be represented at the Olympics,” she wrote.
Lee Satterfield, Assistant Secretary of State who leads the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, also participated in the meeting.
“The Assistant Secretary outlined that the United States will continue to join a vast community of nations in our unwavering support for the people of Ukraine and hold the Russian Federation accountable for its brutal and barbaric war against Ukraine, as well as the complicit Lukashenka regime in Belarus,” a U.S. Department of State spokesperson said.
