The distribution of this letter comes on the eve of a conference bringing together the Sports Ministers of several countries on Friday organized by London, on the presence of these athletes at the Paris Games.

In this response, dated January 31, to the multiple calls from kyiv to exclude the representatives of the two countries, even under a neutral banner, Thomas Bach also assures that the Ukrainian "pressures" are perceived as "extremely regrettable" by "the vast majority". National Olympic Committees (NOCs) and international federations.

According to Mr Bach, "the NOC of Ukraine certainly does not enjoy the support or solidarity of the vast majority of stakeholders in the Olympic movement".

"And as history has shown, previous boycotts have not achieved their political goals and have only served to punish athletes" in the countries concerned, continues the German, himself deprived of the defense of his Olympic team foil title by Berlin's boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

The boss of the IOC also recalls that any sporting boycott "is a violation of the Olympic Charter", without however explicitly mentioning sanctions, while North Korea was deprived by the IOC of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing for not having sent a team to those in Tokyo in 2021.

Finally, Thomas Bach assures that the participation under neutral banner of Russian and Belarusian sportsmen in the 2024 Olympics "has not even been discussed in concrete terms yet", therefore qualifying as "premature" kyiv's efforts to prevent it.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in late February 2022, athletes from both countries have been banned from most world events.

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But the IOC set fire to the powder at the end of January, by proposing a roadmap to organize the return of these athletes under a neutral flag, provided that they had "not actively supported the war in Ukraine".

Ukrainian President Zelensky on February 9, 2023 after a meeting with European leaders in Brussels © YVES HERMAN / POOL/AFP

"No athlete should be banned from competition on the sole basis of his passport," assured the executive of this body.

This position is unacceptable for kyiv, which immediately threatened a boycott, accusing the Olympic body of being "a promoter of war, murder and destruction".

Since then, a front has been organized in support of kyiv, even if only a handful of states are considering a boycott, such as Estonia and Poland.

Latvia has thus warned that it "does not participate in the Games alongside the aggressor country".

In early February, Polish Sports Minister Kamil Bortniczuk said he expected around 40 countries to oppose the participation of Russians and Belarusians at Friday's conference.

The United States, on the other hand, came out in favor of the neutral banner compromise.

For France and the city of Paris, organizer of these Games, the question is more and more sensitive.

The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, visiting kyiv on Thursday, spoke out against the participation of Russian athletes "as long as Russia continues to wage war on Ukraine", after having defended their coming "under a neutral banner ", so as not to "deprive the athletes of their competition".

French President Emmanuel Macron also said on Thursday that he had "spoken" with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky about a possible exclusion of Russian athletes from the Games, specifying that he would personally decide "in the summer".

And the various protagonists return the responsibility for a decision on this subject.

The IOC, which traditionally sends its convocations to the national Olympic committees a year before the Games, insists that it is the international sports federations which remain "the only authorities" governing their competitions at the Olympic Games.

The said federations remain silent for the moment.

© 2023 AFP