(Geneva) The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Friday firmly rejected accusations of “ethnic discrimination” made the day before by Russian President Vladimir Putin due to limitations on the participation of Russian athletes in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

“We strongly reject accusations that these measures constitute ‘ethnic discrimination’,” an IOC spokesperson said in an email to AFP.

Participation in the Games is “in no way a human right” and “the strict conditions that the IOC has laid down in its recommendations to the International Federations for the neutral (under banner) participation of athletes holding a Russian or Belarusian passport in the international competitions are in accordance with the Olympic charter,” he argued, adding that they came in reaction to the “violation” of this same charter by Moscow and Minsk.

During a speech on sport on Thursday, Vladimir Putin accused the IOC of “ethnic discrimination”. “Thanks to some leaders of the current International Olympic Committee, we have learned that […] the Games themselves can be used as an instrument of political pressure against people who have nothing to do with politics and, facto, (as a) crude instrument of racist, ethnic discrimination,” said the Russian president.

For these IOC officials, “an invitation to the Games is not an unconditional right for the best athletes, but a kind of privilege,” he further proclaimed.

On October 12, the Russian National Olympic Committee (NOC) was suspended with “immediate effect” by the IOC for placing several organizations from occupied Ukrainian regions under its authority.

More broadly, while Russian and Belarusian athletes were banned from all international competitions after the launch of the Russian offensive in Ukraine in February 2022, their participation in the 2024 Olympics is shaking up the world of sport.

In March 2023, the IOC recommended their reinstatement in international competitions outside the Olympic Games, provided that they compete under a neutral banner, in an individual capacity, and that they have not “actively supported the war in Ukraine”. He has not yet decided on the Games.

Ukraine, for its part, threatened to boycott the Paris Olympics if Russians and Belarusians were allowed to participate.

Russia was already the subject of exclusion from world sport a few years before the offensive in Ukraine for having organized a state system of doping of its athletes.

Belarus is also subject to sanctions because this unconditional ally of Russia lent its territory to the Russian army to attack Ukraine in early 2022.