MOSCOW, October 13 Head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach urged not to compare the situation with the accession of the Olympic Council of Crimea to the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) in 2016 with the inclusion of the councils of the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions in the ROC.
Earlier, the IOC Executive Committee, at its meeting in Mumbai, announced the removal of the ROC from the organization until further notice due to the accession of the Olympic Councils of four new regions of Russia. According to Bach, the IOC never recognized the inclusion of the Crimean Council in the ROC.
“»The ROC was informed about the procedure that had been put into effect, they responded to us in writing. The meaning of the answer was something like this — the Duma adopted a law on the admission of new territories to Russia, the ROC had nothing left to do except accept the Olympic councils for membership. Crimea was also mentioned there, they compared the situation with that one, but such a comparison cannot be made because the IOC has never recognized the inclusion of Crimea in the Russian Federation,” Bach told reporters.
“They asked why you didn’t punish us earlier, but we did not recognize the annexation of Crimea to Russia, and in addition, in 2016 we did not have time and had no problems with the participation of Russian athletes in the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Today I was informed that there will be no official comment from the ROC, but I cannot follow all the comments on this topic, I think there will be a lot of them,” added Bach.