Vladislav Heraskevich, the Ukrainian Olympian who held a "No War in Ukraine" sign in the skeleton competition during the Beijing Games in protest at the troop deployment of Vladimir Putin's army to his country's borders at the time, is calling for an investigation by the Ethics Committee of the... International Olympic Committees against the Russian IOC members, in particular Yelena Isinbayeva.

Christopher Becker

sports editor.

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“While the IOC is chanting 'Give peace a chance', some members of the IOC (Isinbayeva is one of them) openly support the war... Where is the IOC Ethics Committee?

Or does it also apply in this situation, 'Sport has nothing to do with politics?'” Heraskevich wrote on Twitter.

Last Friday, IOC President Thomas Bach published an open letter with the call from the Lennon song to give peace a chance and reaffirmed the IOC's desire for international sports federations to exclude Russian and Belarusian athletes.

Bach did not go into the whereabouts of Isinbayeva and the three other Russian members in the IOC.

Isinbayeva, the world record holder in the pole vault, is an outspoken partisan of the Russian president and, among other things, sat on the body that drafted a new constitution two years ago that will allow Putin to continue his presidency until 2036.

Isinbayeva, an officer in the Russian army and during a visit to an air force base in Syria, described the noise of Russian bombers taking off as a "lullaby".

Bach wrote in his open letter on Friday that just four days after the end of the Beijing games, “all our hopes for Ukraine have been dashed.

The horrific images and reports of the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army have shocked the world.

Every day we are more devastated by the sight of so much human suffering, sorrow, despair and destruction.”

Bach expressed the condolences of IOC members to the victims of the war.

While again calling for the banning of Russian and Belarusian athletes from international competitions, he reiterated that Russian sports organizations were not responsible for the war.

With this justification, the IOC has so far refused to exclude the Russian (and Belarusian) Olympic Committee.