DISINFO: The 2024 Olympic Games in Paris will be a summit of Russophobia
SUMMARY
The International Olympic Committee will not allow athletes from Belarus and Russia to participate in the 2024 Olympic Games under their national flags. The Olympic Games will be a summit of Russophobia. Politicisation of the international Olympic movement is killing the central idea of the Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee has turned into a political organisation which directly works with the US and its vassals from the EU. The IOC is currently the EU’s sport branch.
RESPONSE
This is a recurring pro-Kremlin propagandist narrative about ubiquitous Russophobia in Western countries and international organisations, targeting the International Olympic Committee in this particular instance. For background, read our analysis: The “Russophobia” Myth: Appealing to the Lowest Feelings. It also spreads the ‘lost sovereignty’ narrative by calling EU countries vassals of the US.
Russia and Belarus have been banned from participating in the opening ceremony, but their athletes will be able to attend the Olympics on a neutral basis under the Olympic flag. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) suspended Russia from the 2024 Games last year, but it permitted Russian athletes to take part as neutrals as long as they did not actively support Russia's large-scale aggression against Ukraine.
The decision not to allow athletes from Russia and Belarus to participate in international sports events is a result of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. It is in that context that the Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee on February 28, 2022 issued its recommendation that International Sports Federations and organisers of sports events “not invite or allow the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials in international competitions”.
To obfuscate the actual reason behind the IOC decision, pro-Kremlin outlets proposed a number of false pretexts debunked in our earlier cases: Russia is not welcome at Olympics, because the EU is Nazi, Russophobic and anti-Semitic; The Baltic states, Poland, and the UK support racial discrimination against Russia’s athletes at Olympic games; Banning Russia from the Olympics is a modern form of racism.
Discrediting international organisations by calling them puppets and accusing them of having an anti-Russian bias is a frequent pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative. See other examples in our database, such as claims that the OSCE has turned into London’s proxy, international organisations like the UN are servile US tools, that the West employed hybrid warfare against Russia in the UN General Assembly, and that European Court of Human Rights turns into a political tool against Russia.