Ukrainian Minister of Youth and Sports Matviy Bidny claims that 760 Ukrainian athletes and coaches have died as a result of Russian aggression.
"Russia has killed 760 Ukrainian athletes and coaches since the start of the full-scale war. This is the reality Ukraine lives in, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) turns a blind eye to it. On July 7, they made the shameful decision to lift restrictions on Russian athletes," Bidny wrote on Facebook.
The minister noted that the IOC justified its decision by claiming that the Russians had allegedly corrected all the violations for which sanctions were previously imposed against them. "In reality, the aggressor simply resorted to a legal trick: they eliminated the category of ‘regional councils’ from their charter. Thus, they excluded all 85 of their own regions and four occupied Ukrainian territories from the structure of the Russian Olympic Committee. This was done solely to ensure that our regions would automatically be excluded from the structure. After all, a targeted exclusion of only Ukrainian regions would be perceived in Russia itself as an admission that these territories do not belong to them," he said.
Bidny emphasized that legal manipulations do not change the main point: the Russian Federation continues the war, and its sports remain a propaganda tool and continue to operate in the occupied territories.
"We are collecting new evidence of these manipulations and passing it on to the IOC, international federations, and partners. We continue to work on all fronts to defend the honor of Ukrainian sport and the memory of our fallen athletes," he added. As reported, on June 23, Ukrainian Sports Minister Matviy Bidny stated that 682 Ukrainian athletes and coaches had died due to Russian aggression, 19 were in Russian captivity, and 13 were missing.
