Officially, Russians are welcome to participate in the Asian Games

Today, the Olympic Council of Asia offered to give Russian and Belarusian athletes the opportunity to participate in the Asian Games, despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “All athletes, regardless of their nationality or passport, should be able to participate in sports competitions,” the Kuwait-based Olympic Council of Asia said on its official website.

He added, “The Olympic Council of Asia offered to give qualified Russian and Belarusian athletes an opportunity to participate in Asian competitions, including the Asian Games,” which will be hosted by the Chinese city of Hangzhou in the fall of 2023. This step may allow Russian athletes to participate in competitions such as qualifying for the Summer Olympics in Paris.

The International Olympic Committee announced on Wednesday that the return of Russian athletes to participate in the Paris Olympics, scheduled for July 2024, should be “explored further … under strict conditions,” despite Ukrainian calls to ban them. While most international federations followed the International Olympic Committee’s recommendation last February to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, many questions have resurfaced about the fate of their participation in the Paris Summer Olympics. The ICRC earlier described the issue as a “major dilemma” that has been politicized by governments intervening to ban them.

“No athlete should be prevented from competing solely because of his passport,” the committee said in a statement yesterday. “Therefore, a path should be explored for athletes to participate in competitions under strict conditions,” she added. She added that “the vast majority of those involved in the consultations” supported the committee, which is exploring ways to reintegrate the two countries’ athletes, “despite the fact that each international federation is the sole authority for its international competitions.” The International Olympic Committee “welcomed and appreciated” the offer of the Olympic Council of Asia to include Russian and Belarusian athletes in its continental competitions.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, to prevent Russian athletes from participating in the Olympic Games to be hosted by Paris, with the passage of 11 months since the Russian war in Ukraine. “I especially emphasized that Russian athletes should not have a place in the Olympic Games in Paris,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram following a phone call with Macron.

From the Russian and Belarusian lands, Moscow launched a large-scale military operation against Ukraine on February 24, just three days after the closing ceremony of the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, in violation of the Olympic armistice that begins a week before the start of the Olympic Games and ends a week after the end. Paralympic Games. On that day, the International Olympic Committee was quick to punish both Moscow and Minsk. Since then, no international sporting event has been organized in Russia or Belarus, nor has any sporting event received any international support. It was also forbidden to raise any national symbols of these two countries during any international sporting event.