The Ukrainian government actively backed a journalist who made it his mission to prevent Russian athletes from participating in the Paris Olympics, CNN reported on Sunday.
Officials in numerous sports issued a blanket international ban on holders of Russian and Belarusian passports following the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has since acknowledged that the measure was discriminatory, and created a procedure which grants some Russian and Belarusian competitors the status of Individual Neutral Athletes (AINs).
Among other conditions, the license requires applicants not to support Moscow in any way in the conflict with Ukraine. Artem Khudolieiev, who heads the newsroom of a small Ukrainian news outlet, told CNN how he spent months trawling social media for posts by athletes that could be taken as supportive of Russian policies, before reporting them to the IOC.
“In taekwondo, we managed to get the entire [Russian] team, all four people, banned because I submitted information,” he said of his work.
The IOC allowed limited Russian participation at this summer’s Paris Games despite vocal objections from Kiev. Officials from the Ukrainian National Olympic Committee and Sports Ministry endorsed Khudolieiev’s work, and included his tip-offs in their communications with international vetting authorities.
“In general, I think we managed to exclude about 30 people from participation with our facts,” Vadym Gutzeit, head of the Ukrainian National Olympic Committee, told CNN. He described the highly limited presence of Russians at the Paris Games as a “victory” for his nation.
Watchers Media, Khudolieiev’s outlet, was launched by the Ukrainian think-tank Agency For Legislative Initiatives, which operates on grants received from the US, Canada, the EU, and Sweden, among others, and partners with the Ukrainian government, according to its website.
Moscow has described as insulting and discriminatory the terms that the IOC put forward for Russian athletes to compete, while the Foreign Ministry compared the restrictions to a form of racism. Some Russian athletes successfully cleared to compete as AINs have refused to participate at the Olympics, in solidarity with those who were rejected.
“We are one of the strongest national federations and world teams,” the president of the Russian Judo Federation, Sergey Soloveychik, said in June, announcing the body’s decision to boycott the Games. “The IOC’s actions are undermining the Olympic movement as a whole and destroying the status of the Olympic Games as a meaningful sporting event.”