Putin forced to scrap plans for Russian version of Olympics | World | News

Vladimir Putin has been forced to postpone indefinitely his plans to launch the World Friendship Games, in a humiliating blow for the Kremlin.

The Games are seen as Moscow’s retaliation to the ban imposed on Russian athletes from competing under the country’s flag in Paris this summer.

They were initially intended to take place in Yekaterinburg in September, before being pushed back to an unspecified date in 2025.

However, a decree issued by Putin on Monday said the Games would now be postponed until further notice.

Russian athletes were barred last year by the International Olympic Committee from taking part in this summer’s Paris Olympics.

The ban was imposed as a result of Russia‘s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, that has killed thousands of civilians in the country.

However, in a late compromise, the IOC allowed Russian athletes to compete as neutrals, as long as they did not actively support Putin’s war in Ukraine.

The IOC has also criticised Russia‘s plans to hold its own version of the Olympics, calling it a “cynical attempt to politicise sport” and urged countries not to participate.

A furious Kremlin said the IOC’s ban and criticisms amounted to “Neo-nazism”, accusing the organisation of betraying its own principles.

“These decisions demonstrate how far the IOC has moved away from its stated principles and slipped into racism and neo-Nazism,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in March.

She claimed the neutral status forced Russian athletes to “renounce any association with their homeland, with their citizenship, with their history, culture and people.”

“The IOC’s decisions are wrongful, unjust and unacceptable,” she added.

“We are outraged by the unprecedented discriminatory conditions imposed by the International Olympic Committee on Russian athletes.”

The Friendship Games were first launched in 1984, following the Soviet Union’s decision to boycott the Los Angeles Olympics.

This was in retaliation for a similar boycott of the Moscow 1980 Olympics by the US team.

The US pulled out of the Moscow Olympics in protest against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan towards the end of 1979.