Ukrainian Sports Community Urges Exclusion of Russians from World Games
Ukraine should make every effort to prevent Russian and Belarusian athletes from participating in the XII World Games 2025 in China this summer, according to representatives of the Ukrainian sports community.
The Gaze reports on this with reference to Ukrinform.
As they noted during a public discussion, the International World Games Association (IWGA) decided to allow neutral athletes with Russian and Belarusian passports to participate in the competition. As of today, 32 athletes from Russia and Belarus have already been pre-qualified in 7 sports for the XII World Games 2025.
"The pro-Russian lobby is gradually starting to return its athletes to international competitions - especially in federations with Russian representatives. Their athletes are now starting to remove all information from social media so that it is not visible who they support. But we know that these athletes support their propagandists and aggressors," said Olympic medallist and chair of the Subcommittee on High Performance Sports and Sports Activities of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Youth and Sports Olha Saladukha.
The attempts of the Russians to hide their public support for the war in Ukraine make it difficult to gather an appropriate evidence base for sanctions against them.
"There is almost no evidence base on the support of their criminal regime by Russian athletes who are going to the World Games. We are asking everyone to help us find the evidence base on these athletes so that we can appeal to the IWGA about their involvement in the criminal regime and violation of the IOC principles for admission to the competition," said Oksana Anastasieva, Director of the Department of High Performance Sports at the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
Meanwhile, according to Dmitry Zolotukhin, an expert on information warfare and competitive intelligence, it is enough to deprive at least some Russian athletes of participation in the competition who have ‘blatant facts of supporting the war’.
"Let's choose the most egregious facts of war support by Russian athletes. Even if one such athlete is withdrawn from the competition, it will be a good result. Ukrainian government agencies and organisations do not have the resources to physically process information about such a large number of athletes," Zolotukhin said.
The XII World Games 2025 will take place in Chengdu, China, from 7 to 17 August.
The World Games are a multi-sport competition held every four years by the International Association of World Games.