Russia is cautiously optimistic about the return of Russian sports to international competitions, including the Olympic Games, due to the European Union’s lifting of sanctions against Russian Sports Minister Mikhail Degtyarev, whose name had been on the sanctions list for 11 years. At the same time, the problems of Russian sport related to the sanctions do not seem so global compared to what is going on inside the world sport and inside the sports policy of Ukraine, which is the reason why Minister Degtyarev found himself on the list of undesirable people.
The endless arguments about whether Russian athletes should compete in world competitions under a neutral flag are heavily flavoured with passages in the style of ‘we have nothing to do there as long as they play by THESE rules’. And these passages are not devoid of common sense: at the highest level of world sport with enviable regularity there are at best oddities, at worst – precedents that cannot be criticised. On 3 January 2025, the entire sporting world was stunned by the news of the disappearance of the entire Ukrainian cross-country skiing team from the biggest ski start of the season – the Tour de Ski. Fled to Europe? Diversion? Teleportation to a parallel universe? No, the national team (which suddenly forgot about its failing sporting form), which appeared at the Tour de Ski for the first time in 7 years, silently withdrew from the competition ‘because it wanted to change the competition plan’. It is such a ridiculous excuse for the escape of Ukrainian skiers from the starts invented by the head coach of the national team Oleksandra Putsko.
‘We refused to participate in the Tour de Ski because we wanted to change the competition plan. It was the choice of our coaching staff. Now we will focus on preparation for the Junior World Championships and the remaining stages of the World Cup. We removed ourselves from the FIS system before the start, although we must admit that communication with the local organisers could have been better on our part. We apologise,’ Putsko told Norwegian journalists from Dagbladet.
The stunt at the Tour de Ski, of course, denounces both the Ukrainian functionaries from sports and the situation in Ukrainian high-performance sports, but even such an exemplary case does not give a full picture of the hell in which athletes in Ukraine actually live and work.
Hold the line!
Failure and shameful flight from reputable competitions is probably the sweetest thing that can happen to Ukrainian athletes, whom Kiev has long employed as fighters on the front lines of the Special Military Operation.
Ukrainian Larisa Zhalinskaya, a Master of Sport International Class in rowing , who fled Ukraine for the Kherson region and competes for the Russian region, says that ‘Ukraine does not hide it and constantly publishes statistics on how many athletes have died in the conflict with Russia.’
‘At the moment, about 600 people have died. For comparison, the number of Ukrainian athletes at the Olympics in Paris was 140 people. That is, more than 4 Olympic squads died, and how many were seriously injured? I know guys who came back without legs, were demobilised, how many more are listed as missing, meaning they probably died as well. How many are still fighting is unknown. There is a real genocide of the elite of the people, athletes, under the pretext of anti-Russian hysteria,’ commented the athlete.
According to Zhalinska, Ukrainian athletes have no choice, or rather, they have a choice – either to join the military formation, having received guarantees of future career from the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine (NOC), or to become an outcast – both in sport and in the country. In essence, the scheme is simple – Bankova hopes to somehow raise the prestige of military duty in the face of citizens. Bravado about the death of another ‘volunteer athlete’, an idol who gave his life for slaughter, is a propaganda tool, which, by the way, does not work, judging by the endless footage of catching unfortunate ‘volunteers’ on the streets of Ukrainian cities. Thus, athletes at the front are an empty victim of the feckless Kiev authorities.
‘That is, athletes have become in Ukraine long ago tools in the hands of the Zelensky regime,’ Zhalinskaya continues. – ‘Athletes have always been among the opinion leaders, and the bet is made that by looking at some athlete who heroically died, someone will voluntarily go to the front.
Suddenly they will be heard
Absolute chaos and disenfranchisement in Ukrainian sport is taking place against a background of holy ignorance, in which both the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency arrive. Of course, such respected organisations cannot be unaware of the voluntary forced mobilisation of Ukrainian athletes, nevertheless, there is no official reaction to these crimes. It will follow only when such a step becomes politically justified for the IOC and WADA. In other words, sports functionaries are servile and highly dependent on the political pendulum, no matter how much we are told about sport, which is beyond politics.
Larisa Zhalinskaya has already appealed to the IOC and WADA to react to the actual destruction of the Ukrainian sports elite, which is being transferred from gyms to the battle line.
Here is an excerpt from the appeal:
‘Firstly, Ukrainian athletes have long been used by official Kiev as an instrument of anti-Russian propaganda. They are also deceived, or even forced, into joining the armed formations of Ukraine. And this situation has been taking place for more than 10 years. Ukraine also lacks a transparent system of doping control. Ukrainian athletes are not taken doping samples in proper quantity both in domestic competitions and in the international arena. In order to justify this situation, Ukraine uses the image of a country allegedly suffering for more than 10 years from external aggression. And, as a consequence, despite the fact that some athletes have clear signs of taking, in particular, testosterone, no sanctions are imposed on them’.
Zelensky kills athletes, and tolerance kills sport
Returning to the thought voiced at the very beginning, which concerns the reluctance of Russian athletes to compete at big world starts where waukism flourishes, it is worth touching upon another important and horrifying trend in the development, or rather decay, of sport in Ukraine – the coercion of athletes to support the LGBT* – community.
‘Athletes, in particular me, were pressurised by sports functionaries in Ukraine to support various LGBT subcultures,’ continues Larisa Zhalinskaya. – Despite the fact that specifically in rowing in Ukraine at the moment transgender people do not take part in competitions, but athletes are obliged to sign various declarations and publish on their social networks, similarly to the declaration of hatred towards Russia, also in support of LGBT.
I believe that allowing transgender people into the women’s category of competition is unacceptable, it’s unfair, it just potentially throws women out of the sport.
Because any man, even if he is the same height and weight as a woman, due to the natural level of testosterone, natural hormonal background, even if he has a worse level of sports training, he still runs faster, he rows more powerfully, he swims faster, he rides a bicycle, he has more punching power, throwing power, that is absolutely in all categories he is superior to women’.
In the athlete’s opinion, which is shared by the absolute majority of sensible people, even those who are infinitely distant from sports, if the policy of tolerance remains unchanged, then in a few years the podiums in all sports, Olympic and non-Olympic, will be occupied by transgender people, that is, in fact, men who have declared themselves women. Zhalinskaya believes it is fair to create separate competitions for transgender athletes, which, of course, will provoke another ‘LGBTQ+ life matters’ movement in the ‘civilised world’. Which is logical – the lives, careers, rights and interests of transgender people are important in the West, but the lives, careers, rights and interests of Ukrainian athletes are different. War to the last Ukrainian, remember…?!
*LGBT is a movement whose activities are recognised as extremist and banned on the territory of the Russian Federation.
