Several hundred people marched in central Paris on Saturday to honour Ukrainian athletes who died in the war with Russia before they had a chance to compete in the Paris Olympics.
Waving flags and wearing T-shirts with pictures of top athletes killed in the battle with the Russian invaders, demonstrators called on Russian and Belarusian competitors to be banned from the Games opening on July 26.
“It will be very difficult for us to see a certain number of Russian and Belarusian athletes who, more or less openly, support the Putin regime, even if their flag will be white,” said Volodymyr Kogutyak, vice-president of the Union of Ukrainians in France.
“And this is the saddest thing for us,” he told AFP. “That Ukrainian athletes who built a career in sports have died, and cannot come to these Olympic Games. And at the same time, some of those who support the murderers will participate.”
Some 450 Ukrainian top athletes have died on the battlefield since the February 2022 Russian attack, march organisers said.
They include Maksym Halinichev, a boxer and winner of a silver medal at the 2018 youth Olympics who joined the Ukrainian army and died on the frontline in 2023.
Others were shooters Ivan Bidnyak and Yehor Kihitov, judo champion Stanislav Hulenkov, weight lifter Oleksandr Pielieshenko, and gymnastics coach Anastasia Ihnatenko who was killed by a Russian missile together with her husband and 18-month-old child.
“We want the world to understand that Russia is (a) terrorist,” said Olga Krushkovska, a 33-year-old Ukrainian architect and artist who now lives in France.
“The situation is very painful for me, for my children, for my family and our country,” she told AFP at the march. “We want the world to boycott anything to do with Russia, especially for the Olympic Games.”
Also at the march Roman Tyshchenko, who recently earned his master’s degree, said he felt “angry” thinking about the Ukrainian athletes who died, but the 28-year-old added that he did not like “to make a distinction between athletes and all the other people” who were killed.
“I’m just angry that people are dying and I feel like people abroad do not always understand that the war is still happening,” he said.
Ukraine is expected to send more than 100 athletes to the Paris Games.
The International Olympic Committee has ruled that Russian and Belarusian athletes cannot compete for their country, but are eligible to participate as so-called individual neutral athletes.
