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Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo says there should be no Russian delegation at the Paris Olympics next year if Moscow continues its war against Ukraine.
- Anne Hidalgo previously said Russians and Belarusians could compete under a neutral flag but back-pedalled
- She left the door open for Russian dissidents who do not support the war to parade in Paris "under a refugee banner"
- Russia welcomed the IOC's path back to the Olympics but says it should not leave out athletes deemed to be "actively supporting the war in Ukraine"
Hidalgo previously said Russian competitors could take part under a neutral flag but she back-pedalled in an interview with the France Info media outlet.
Acknowledging a final decision belonged to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Hidalgo said she wanted Russian athletes banned "as long as there is this war, this Russian aggression on Ukraine".
"It is not possible to parade as if nothing had happened, to have a delegation that comes to Paris while the bombs continue to rain down on Ukraine," she said.
Hidalgo's comments on Tuesday came after Ukraine's sports minister last week renewed a threat to boycott the Games if Russia and Belarus are allowed to compete and said Kyiv would lobby others to join.
No nation has so far declared it will boycott, but Ukraine has won support from Poland, the Baltic nations and Denmark, who pushed back against an IOC plan to allow delegations from Russia and ally Belarus to compete in Paris as "neutral athletes" without flags or anthems.
The latest backers are the Nordic nations whose Olympic, Paralympic and confederations wrote a joint letter to the IOC to reiterate their opposition to Russian and Belarusian athletes being allowed to take part in international sports.
Hidalgo left the door open for Russian dissidents who do not support President Vladimir Putin's actions to parade in Paris "under a refugee banner".
Russia has cautiously welcomed the IOC's decision to give it a path to the Olympics but demands it drops a condition that would leave out those athletes deemed to be "actively supporting the war in Ukraine".
Russian Olympic Committee head Stanislav Pozdnyakov called that aspect discriminatory.
The IOC, which previously recommended excluding Russia and Belarus from world sports on safety grounds, now argues it cannot discriminate against them purely based on citizenship.
If the IOC proposal takes effect, Paris would be the fourth straight Olympics where Russian athletes have competed without the national flag or anthem. The Russian teams at the Winter Olympics in 2018 and 2022 and the Summer Olympics in 2021 were caught up in the fallout from state-sponsored doping.
The last time multiple countries boycotted an Olympics was in 1988, when North Korea and others refused to attend the Summer Games in South Korea.
AP