Paris march honours Ukraine athletes killed in Russia war
Several hundred people marched in central Paris Saturday to honour Ukrainian athletes who died in the war with Russia before they had a chance to compete in the Paris Olympics, AFP reports.
Waving flags and wearing T-shirts with pictures of top athletes killed in the battle with the Russian invaders, demonstrators called on Russian and Belarussian 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 Belarussian 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.
Ukraine is expected to send more than 100 athletes to the Paris Games.
The International Olympic Committee has ruled that Russian and Belarussian athletes cannot compete for their country, but are eligible to participate as so-called individual neutral athletes.
