The logo of the Russian Olympic Committee can be seen during the annual Olympic meetings at its headquarters in Moscow on March 14, 2024.
Sefa Karacan | Anatolia | Getty Images
Russia will be asked to watch the ceasefire in Ukraine during the Paris Olympics, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview from Paris on Saturday with Ukrainian television and posted on Saturday by a Ukrainian journalist on her YouTube channel.
“Demand for a ceasefire during the Olympic Games. They [the Russians] must do it. This has all the time happened,” the interlocutor said, speaking through a translator.
“It will be required,” Macron says in French, followed by a voiceover reply in Ukrainian: “Yes, we will ask for it.”
“The principle of the host country is to follow the Olympic movement,” the translator quoted Macron as saying. “This is a message of peace. We will also follow the decision of the Olympic Committee.”
The International Olympic Committee condemned Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, saying the Russian government had violated the Olympic Truce, which goals to make use of the power of sport to advertise peace and dialogue.
On Thursday, the president of the Russian Olympic Committee said the ROC wouldn’t boycott this yr’s Olympic Games in Paris despite restrictions imposed on athletes by the IOC as punishment for the invasion of Ukraine.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told Reuters on Wednesday that she preferred Russians and Belarusians “not to come.” Russians and Belarusians were initially banned from competing internationally following the invasion, for which Belarus was used as a staging post.
