MOSCOW, Sep 15 regarding Russian athletes, Stanislav Pozdnyakov, president of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), told reporters. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) at the end of February recommended that international sports federations not allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to participate in competitions due to the situation in Ukraine. A number of international federations followed this recommendation. «There are 206 National Olympic Committees in the world, but most of the establishment is represented by the collective West, which imposes sanctions. But now there has been an awareness of the dead end of the chosen course, and now there are contacts, much is being done to get out of the situation as soon as possible. Because many suffer colossal financial losses,» Pozdnyakov said during an extended meeting of the ROC Athletes' Commission with representatives of all-Russian sports federations and the Belarusian NOC Athletes' Commission. «Almost seven months have passed since the sanctions. Although some colleagues are trying to present (them) as some kind of defense of the Olympic movement, but these are sanctions, prohibitions. We are faced with a problem that has fallen unexpectedly, because all the time that I have been in the Olympic movement, the main motto has been «Faster, higher, stronger.» We must be out of politics. With this dogma we lived until February of this year.The world is going through global changes, like and sports, and the sports movement did not pass this test,» the head of the ROC said.
