Russia cannot be allowed at Olympics – Zelensky

President Zelensky has said Russia should not be allowed to compete at the 2024 Olympics in Paris. The Ukraine president argues that if they are allowed to compete it is showing that “terror is somehow acceptable.” 

He said he had raised the issue with French President Emmanuel Macron. 

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has said Russian and Belarusian athletes could compete as neutrals at the Olympics. 

But Ukraine has threatened to boycott Paris 2024 if Russian and Belarusian athletes are allowed to compete. 

Attempts by the IOC “to bring Russian athletes back into the Olympic Games are attempts to tell the whole world that terror is somehow acceptable”, Mr Zelensky said in his nightly video address.

Russia must not be allowed to use the Games “or any other sport event as propaganda for its aggression or its state chauvinism”, he added.

The IOC said, “no athlete should be prevented from competing just because of their passport”.

But in response to the IOC suggesting the athletes can compete as neutrals, President Zelensky says there no neutrality in sport while his country’s athletes are dying on the battlefield.

He compared it to the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin when the Nazis were in power.

“There was a major Olympic mistake,” he said. “The Olympic movement and terrorist states definitely should not cross paths.”

The UK government has also condemned the plan to allow athletes to compete neutrally as a “world away from the reality of war.”