The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has called on the world's athletes to ignore Russia's plans to organize a so-called Friendship Games, saying the plan is a "cynical attempt to politicize sport."
In a statement issued on March 19, the IOC said that "contrary to the Fundamental Principles of the Olympic Charter and the resolutions by the UN General Assembly, the Russian government intends to organize purely politically motivated sports events in Russia."
Russia has been isolated in international sport since it launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In response, Moscow established and funded the International Friendship Association (IFA) to host what it is calling the "Friendship Games."
The IFA's first "Summer Friendship Games" are scheduled to be held in Moscow and Yekaterinburg in September this year, while so-called "Winter Friendship Games" are planned to be held in Sochi in 2026.
"It is a cynical attempt by the Russian Federation to politicize sport. The IOC Athletes' Commission, representing all the Olympic athletes of the world, clearly opposes using athletes for political propaganda," it said.
The commission warned of the risk of athletes being forced by their governments into participating in such an event, "thereby being exploited as part of a political propaganda campaign" even as the Russian government shows "total disrespect for the global anti-doping standards and the integrity of competitions."
"This is the very same government which was implicated in the systemic doping program at the Olympic Winter Games Sochi 2014 and, later, the manipulation of anti-doping data," the statement stressed.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described the IOC statement as "rudeness and an indicator of the hopelessness to which the IOC doomed itself by succumbing to Russophobia."