Speaking to POLITICO from his office in Kyiv, Oleksiy Perevezentsev, president of the Ukrainian Curling Federation, said that, “what also disturbs is that actually nothing has changed. We just have absolutely unfair conditions for Ukrainian athletes,” while pointing to the ongoing destruction of his country’s sports facilities at Putin’s hands.
“We have more than 500 sites of sports infrastructure, which are partially or totally destroyed,” Perevezentsev said, moments after an air raid siren delayed the start of the interview. “The latest was last week in Sumy. It’s a quite large Olympic infrastructural center which was totally destroyed by Russian missiles and drones.”
He also accused World Curling of transgressing the International Olympic Committee’s current guidance for Russian athletes. “Also, they actually violated good governance in the sense that the recommendation of the International Olympic Committee was just to bring back youth, not juniors — another category, which actually could be conscripted into the Russian army. It’s a category from 18 to 21,” he pointed out.
In Geneva, Perevezentsev hopes that a coalition of allied European countries will push to postpone the return of adult Russian athletes, as any reintegration risks appeasing Putin and the Kremlin, he said.
“In the current context, normalization risks becoming legitimization. And once that line is crossed, rebuilding trust in international sport will be extremely difficult,” Bidnyi, the sports minister, added.