Ukraine's Bidnyi 'outraged' by Russia's Olympic return
In exclusive comments to DW, Ukraine's sports minister, Matviy Bidnyi, said he is outraged by the IOC opening the door to Russia's return to the
In exclusive comments to DW, Ukraine's sports minister, Matviy Bidnyi, said he is outraged by the IOC opening the door to Russia's return to the Olympics Ukrainian Sports Minister Matviy Bidnyi says he is "outraged" at the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) decision to lift restrictions on Russian athletes and he has called on IOC President Kirsty Coventry to visit Ukraine. "Together with all Ukrainians and the entire clean sports community worldwide, I am profoundly outraged. This decision is deeply unfair to every athlete who plays by the rules, and it is a total disrespect to the memory of hundreds of Ukrainian athletes killed by Russia," Bidnyi wrote in response to a DW query. Bidnyi added that Coventry should come to Ukraine in order to "see the reality with her own eyes." "I want her to stand on our train platforms and see our defenders saying goodbye to their children before leaving for the frontline. I want her to visit our ruined sports academies and meet our young athletes who have to train under missile sirens. I am absolutely convinced that after witnessing this firsthand, any talk of 'neutrality' or 'procedural compliance' would stop immediately," the sports minister said. Athletes on Duty To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video A legal trick? In its statement released on Tuesday, the IOC said that analysis conducted by its Legal Affairs Commission had found that the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) no longer included any regional sports organizations in territories falling under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Olympic Committee.
Russian Sports Minister Mikhail Degtyarev welcomed the IOC's decision, saying it should clear the way for Russian athletes to make a full return to international sport. However, Bidnyi, his Ukrainian counterpart, said this was misleading because the ROC had actually excluded all 89 of its regional sports organizations, not just those in conquered Ukrainian territory. "A direct exclusion of only Ukrainian territories would be perceived inside Russia as a sign of weakness. It would be a de facto admission that these territories do not belong to them – which is the absolute truth. I simply do not believe that the IOC fails to understand this. This is a deliberate decision to ignore reality, which completely ruins their own credibility." DW has approached the IOC for comment on the matter. Russia has been shut out of international sporting competitions since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with the IOC suspending Russia's Olympic Committee in 2023. In both Paris in 2024 and in Milano Cortina in 2026, some Russian athletes were still able to compete as neutrals but only if they could prove they did not support the war and had no affiliation with Russia's military or security forces. In 2023, Bidnyi said in an interview with DW that calling Russian athletes "neutral means supporting murder." Three years later, Ukraine's sports minister met the latest IOC decision with an equally powerful response.
The BriefWire