Zelensky is right: Ban Russia from the Olympics

The next Olympic Games may be more than a year away, but the war in Ukraine is already causing diplomatic headaches for organizers. Over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach exchanged heated statements about the possibility of Russian athletes competing at the 2024 Summer Games in Paris.

Zelensky was in the right: The IOC should proactively move to ban Russia from the competition. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a violation of the Olympic spirit. Europeans such as Bach, however, who run international institutions such as the IOC or the Austria-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe , seem to think that appeasing tyrants is the best way to keep international relations chugging along and producing profits.

Bach went so far as to claim that letting Russians compete is part of the Olympics’ “peace mission.” He said he wants the games to “unify” the world, “not to contribute to more confrontation, more escalation.” But it is foolish to treat Russia like just any other country, as opposed to an aggressor state that has plunged Europe into violence unseen since World War II.

Of course, it is never that surprising when the IOC makes excuses for tyranny. Last year, the IOC allowed China to host the Winter Olympics, despite the mass murder of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang. At the time, Bach deflected from questions about the Chinese Communist Party’s genocidal policies. He said that commenting on the subject would be “putting the games at risk.” The IOC also had a minimal reaction to Russia’s state-run doping system at earlier Olympics — they banned the Russian flag and anthem but still allowed Russians to compete as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.”

Read more in The Washington Examiner.