Thus, politics should be left out of the Games. Pretend nothing is happening in Bakhmout, Kharkiv or kyiv. Forget the fierce fighting, the deadly bombardments. Do not remember that on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin decided to invade neighboring territory, violating borders and international law. In the name of sport, we are told, in the name of the famous five entwined rings, symbols of Olympism, which guarantees political neutrality. At most, we concede, we could ask Russian and Belarusian athletes to participate in the 2024 Olympics under a neutral banner. Like the one under which Russian athletes paraded at the Tokyo Summer Games in 2021 and at the Beijing Winter Games last year, due to doping.
The Ukrainian people deserve better than these contortions, which recall those which had shaken the Blum government in June 1936, ill at ease at the idea of sending French sportsmen to the Berlin Olympics, transformed into a Nazi propaganda machine. Because since 1936, as we know, the Olympics have been eminently political. Instrumentalized during the Cold War, from Melbourne in 1956 to Los Angeles in 1984. Showcases of authoritarian regimes, at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 or those of Sochi in 2014.
Politics and sport may not go well together, but let’s admit that they are inseparable. Precisely in the name of this quest for “a peaceful society, anxious to preserve human dignity”, which appears in the charter of the Olympic movement, our leaders should say no to Russian athletes at the Paris Olympics.