Since the war began in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus were banned from participating in the Olympic Games. But, according to an article published in the Russian media titled “Visa with a trick,” this year, the international community has lessened the restrictions targeting Russian athletes. According to the report, the International Olympic Committee is banning Russians from participating in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris unless they are ideologically opposed to the war in Ukraine, act under a neutral flag, and have nothing to do with the Russian security agencies.
Nevertheless, Zavur Uguez, Zaurbek Sidakov, and Abdulrashid Sadulaev, all members of the Russian military, were permitted to partake in the wrestling competition at the Olympic Games under a neutral flag.
This right here is a betrayal of the Russians who have been bravely fighting against the Putin regime, often risking their own lives in the process. After all, there should be a penalty for supporting a dictatorial regime. Allowing Russian athletes who are part of the Russian military that is committing war crimes in Ukraine to compete as if they were dissident players is a complete and utter outrage.
How Vladimir Putin has persecuted the Russian people
According to Deputy Chief of US Mission to the OSCE Courtney Austrian, “More than 550 political prisoners are currently in the Kremlin’s custody, including Alexei Navalny, Ilya Yashin, and Alexei Gorinov. Dozens continue to be held in connection with their accurate reporting on – or criticism of – the Kremlin’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine, and we call for the immediate release of all of them. Many Russians have made clear that they oppose the Kremlin’s war.”
However, these Russians face grave persecution.
“In the past two years, the Russian government has only intensified its witch-hunt of opposition and civil society organizations. Not one critic, human rights defender, or independent journalist is safe from the threat of persecution, reprisals and repression,” said Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty International’s Russia Director.
“Following Aleksei Navalny’s attempted poisoning in 2020 and arrest in 2021, Russian authorities sought to destroy freedom of expression in the country. This swift and ruthless crackdown allowed them to quickly stop mass protests against the full-scale invasion of Ukraine a year later.”
As Amnesty International noted, aside from shutting down the Anti-Corruption Foundation and the Citizens’ Rights Protection Foundation, which Navalny had founded, “the Russian authorities have also targeted the Open Russia and Vesna (“spring”) movements, arrested and imprisoned prominent opposition figures and anti-war campaigners, and liquidated the human rights group Memorial, an icon of the human rights movement in Russia. Authorities also attacked the respected Moscow Helsinki Group, closed independent media, and promoted censorship and militaristic rhetoric in educational and cultural institutions.”
As Zviagina noted, “The casualties of Russia’s crackdown on freedom of expression seem endless – and yet, Russian activists in the country and abroad continue to organize in support of human rights and against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
I spoke to a foreign student who had moved to Russia right after the Ukraine war began, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. She told me: “We had no freedom to say or do anything inside of Russia. It was a complete and utter police state.” In fact, soon after the war in Ukraine was declared, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram were banned in Russia so that the Russian people could not wage an effective campaign against the war.
According to this foreign student, “Many people that I know were doing everything just to leave. I myself decided to leave, for I felt that doing a degree at a Russian university would be rendered useless due to the Western-imposed sanctions. A Russian university diploma used to have prestige, but not anymore. Many of the Russians that I knew envied the fact that I could leave and they could not.”
British Ambassador Neil Bush declared, “We cannot become blind to those in Russia who also live in fear due to oppression and Russia’s authoritarian policies. The link between the repression of fundamental freedoms in Russia, and Russia’s aggression against its sovereign, democratic neighbor is clearer than ever.”
Indeed, aside from Ukrainians, no one has suffered more from Putin’s conduct than the Russian people, who for the last couple of years have been systematically sanctioned, even for being ideologically opposed to the war against Ukraine.
Today, Russia is ruined thanks to Putin’s war. According to the Journal on Democracy: “At the moment of the Soviet collapse, Russia inherited a budget deficit that was conservatively estimated at 20% of GNP, it faced the threat of hyperinflation, economic growth was negative, there were shortages throughout the economy, foreign reserves were virtually nonexistent, and it was racking up a mountain of international loan commitments. The state faced the realistic threat of famine and bankruptcy.
But the day before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the country had paid off its debts, built up sizable foreign reserves, and for the most part maintained a budget surplus.” Yet, all of this progress has now been undone and today’s Russia is not much better than it was during the Soviet period.
For this reason, as an acknowledgment to Russian dissidents, the International Olympic Committee decided to lift the ban on athletes who are opposed to Putin’s crimes against humanity, which is a noble move. However, instead of sticking to the letter of this policy, they permitted athletes to compete who are tied to Putin’s war machine and this is a travesty of justice, a spit in your face to Russians who have sacrificed everything to oppose Putin.
This is something that should be reversed.
The writer, a rabbi, is head of the Georgian Jewish community in Azerbaijan.