Ukraine's Olympic chief celebrates limited Russian presence at Paris Olympics

PARIS (AP) — The head of Ukraine’s Olympic delegation touted the limited numbers of Russian athletes at the Paris Olympics — who must compete as neutrals — as war between the two countries grinds on for a third year.

Vadym Guttsait told The Associated Press in an interview that Ukraine began the effort to reduce the number of Russian and Belarusian athletes after the Kremlin's forces invaded Ukraine in 2022 and have kept pressing it nearly until the start of the Games in Paris. Belarus is a key ally of Moscow's.

“During the war, they have no place in the international world,” Guttsait said. “Because every day our people, women and children are killed. Every day they bomb us, and the missiles are flying over our country.”

Only 15 Russian athletes will be competing in the Games and they won’t officially be representing Russia. Russia and neighboring Belarus were banned from sending national teams because of the war in Ukraine, so athletes approved to compete from those countries will do so under neutral status, including tennis star Daniil Medvedev, who won the US Open in 2021.

“It’s nothing,” Guttsait said about Russia’s presence at the 2024 Olympics. “It’s already a victory.”

In Russia, the Olympics are shown in a negative light or not at all in the media. Newspapers' main approach has been to play up the negative, writing about crime in Paris and the inconvenience of barricades placed throughout the city. Russia’s state TV channels aren’t broadcasting any of the events.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova have both slammed the Olympics opening ceremony for LGBTQ-friendly performances. Zakharova also pointed to the rain that soaked the ceremony and issues with the cleanliness of the Seine River.

Russia has refused to send athletes in some sports, including wrestling and judo. The Russian wrestling federation objected to the International Olympic Committee’s choice of which wrestlers to invite, saying the bouts would be incomplete without Russian athletes and that “any sane person understands that the status of the Olympic Games as the most significant sporting event is being questioned.”

Russian athletes' showing in Paris is a big change from the Tokyo Games held in 2021, where Russia had more than 300 athletes participating under the rebranded team name ROC (Russian Olympic Committee) because of a doping scandal. They won 71 medals.

In December 2022, Guttsait started noticing signals that Russian and Belarusian athletes might be allowed to participate in the Paris Games.

At the end of 2022, Ukraine faced missile strikes on its energy infrastructure and spent long winter hours in darkness during resulting blackouts. There was also one of the most grueling battles for the eastern city of Bakhmut, which was one of the first cities reduced to rubble before Russian troops seized it in the spring.

Ukrainian authorities complained that it was unacceptable for Russian athletes to compete at one of the world’s most prestigious sports events, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Guttsait to prevent it.

Guttsait held meetings with representatives of national Olympic committees, wrote letters and took part in Ukraine's International Summit of Sports Ministers.

“It was painstaking work where every day we received feedback from those who either supported us or not,” he said.

Ukraine announced it would boycott the 2024 Olympics if Russian and Belarusian athletes competed under a neutral flag. This decision received widespread global attention amid the war, and that was part of Ukraine’s strategy, Guttsait said.

For the Paris Games, the International Olympic Committee set specific criteria for Russian athletes to qualify, including whether they publicly supported Russia's war.

The war also has affected Ukraine’s Olympic participation, which team was one of the sporting powerhouses that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union. The country will be represented by its smallest delegation in the history of the Summer Games — 140 athletes in 26 sports — that Guttsait attributes to the war.

While in Paris, Guttsait attends competitions every day to support the athletes, donning a panama hat with a Ukrainian coat of arms and Olympic rings.

But Ukrainians cannot leave the war experience at home, and perhaps that made Friday's opening ceremony along the Seine River even more memorable.

“When we were sailing dressed in yellow and blue colors, with our flag. ... It was rewarding, and that people stood up and greeted us with applause,” he recalled. “Our mission at the Olympics is to remind the world that Ukraine survived.”