Fake Flags in the IOC and Russian/Belarus Olympics Competition

"The International Olympic Committee is deeply saddened to hear of the death of Ukrainian figure skater Dmytro Sharpar, who had competed at the Winter Youth Olympic Games, and all the members of the Olympic Community in Ukraine who have lost their lives in this war."

"The IOC extends its most sincere condolences to their families and friends and the Ukrainian people."

"[Our decision however, to allow Russia and Belarus to compete under fake flags in 2024 is] non negotiable."

International Olympics Committee

The IOC's fake flag of 'excellence, friendship and respect'

"The Russian state has chosen the path of terror, and that is why it has no place in the civilized world."

"How many Russian athletes have spoken out to condemn the terror unleashed by their state?"

"In fact, there is almost no such condemnation. There are only a few isolated voices that are fading away."

"[The fake flag that will be flown for Russian athletes in 2024 will be "stained with blood."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

IOC president Thomas Bach (left) met Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv last July, but has not taken up an invitation to visit the war’s frontline. Photograph: ABACA/Shutterstock

 

They are young and they are elite athletes and they are Ukraine's proud athletes competing in a world-class competition to demonstrate excellence in athletic prowess. And because they are young and fit and loyal to their country of birth they put on uniforms instead of sport gear to defend their nation from the vicious predation of a neighbour whose president conspired with the Kremlin to invade Ukraine, destroy it as a nation and seize its assets and geography.

While bombing Ukraine's infrastructure to smithereens and murdering civilians taking shelter in their apartment blocks, theatres, shopping malls, hospitals, Moscow has demonstrated to the international community that it has chosen to depart from civilized mores in favour of a brutalized vision of enlarging its geographic holdings in emulation of the Soviet Union's stranglehold on its near-abroad neighbours.

Ukraine's elite Olympic-class athletes, like Volodymyr Androshchuk, 22, who died of shrapnel wounds in Bakhmut and 19-year-old Ukrainian athlete Yevhen Malyshev who died in battle defending his homeland, now honoured as a great loss by the International Biathlon Union, Ukraine is losing its innocent civilians deliberately targeted by the Russian military, along with Ukrainian servicemen at a rate of an estimated 100 daily.

"The Russian state will again use athletes to bolster the war effort and distract from the atrocities in Ukraine", a coalition of Ukrainian athletes stated. In direct reference to Russia making use of the distraction provided by the Olympics during times when it launches attacks on its neighbours. The Summer Olympics in Beijing come to mind when Georgia was invaded in 2008; during the Sochi Winter Games in 2014 it was the turn of Ukraine (the Donbas and Crimea). 

Again in 2022 during the Beijing Winter Games, Russia saw fit to prepare a second invasion of Ukraine to be launched days following the ending of the Games. Yet the IOC is steadfast in its decision to permit Russian athletes to perform once again in 2024, with the artificial proviso of banning the Russian flag. This, when participating nations claiming support for Ukraine should be strenuously objecting and themselves chose to boycott the Games to demonstrate the strength of their commitment to justice.

Bakhmut's prewar population of 75,000 has mostly fled their destroyed city, now reduced to rubble, where tens of thousands of soldiers have perished in a bid to gift Vladimir Putin with 'victory' on the anniversary of the February 24 invasion. In the pursuit of which Russia's generals have forwarded waves of untrained conscripts and convicted criminals against Ukrainian artillery in an effort to penetrate its defences.

A week ago Ukraine's Defence Ministry reported that about 1,000 Russian soldiers were dying every day, along with hundreds of Ukrainians. And while Putin remorselessly sends Russians to their death and commits his country to a scorched-earth policy to break Ukraine's defence and the spirits of its people, it counts on its athletes to bring glory on the world stage finessing their specialties at the Olympics, turning the world's attention once again to that alter-ego of war; sport.

As for the proud Olympic values of "excellence, friendship and respect", there is always Russia's Sport Federation penchant for using a drug regimen on its athletes to render performances outdistancing their non-drugged competitors to consider. In every metric of human decency and human rights Russia's Vladimir Putin has proven himself to be violently at odds with the civilized nations of the world.

Shame on the International Olympics Committee. Pity that shame will never give Vladimir Putin or the Kremlin  reason for pause, since it is utterly absent in their psyches, geared to greed and violence fuelled by nationalistic fervor and a willingness to slaughter tens of thousands of people to gain their object of geographic conquest.

A serviceman, call sign 'Virus,' of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Vedmak ('Witcher') unit patrols on the front line near Bakhmut on Feb. 18, 2023.  AFP