Olympics 2024: Ukraine should drop threat of boycott - IOC

Russian and Belarusian athletes were allowed to vie nether a neutral emblem astatine the 2022 Winter Paralympics

The International Olympic Committee has urged Ukraine to driblet threats of boycotting Paris 2024 if Russian and Belarusian athletes compete.

Ukraine is hoping to summation planetary enactment for a prohibition connected athletes from the 2 countries implicit Russia's invasion.

The IOC has said it volition "explore a pathway" for Russian and Belarusian athletes to vie arsenic neutrals.

Ukraine's sports minister, Vadym Guttsait, who is besides president of its Olympic Committee, responded by saying the state could boycott the Paris Games, with respective different European nations since besides calling for the prohibition to beryllium upheld.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said allowing Russian athletes to vie astatine the 2024 Olympics would magnitude to showing that "terror is someway acceptable".

In a missive from Bach to Guttsait, which has been seen by the BBC, the IOC president says comments from Ukrainian officials suggesting allowing Russian and Belarusian athletes would beforehand the warfare are "defamatory".

Bach added that threatening a boycott is "premature" due to the fact that the IOC has not discussed the information of Russian and Belarusian athletes arsenic neutrals successful "concrete presumption yet".

He besides accused Ukraine of "pressuring" planetary federations, IOC members and aboriginal Olympic hosts "in an effort to publically power their determination making" and claims this has been "perceived by the immense bulk of them as, astatine the precise least, highly regrettable".

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