Especially when quite a few of the skaters are under 18, which means they are not even eligible to vote, so how is it their fault that their president is a psycho? One could punish all Russian judges, technical specialist and other Russian officials, but why punish the skaters who didn’t have any choice where they were born and who their president is?
Their being minors does not stop Putin from using them for photo-ops and propaganda.
Their parents vote. Their parents choose to put them into an activity that is funded by the government. Presumably their parents tax dollars are going to support the government's budget, right? And presumably, their parents also have control over their assets and income from skating. Somewhere along the line, someone who is responsible for the poor children who have been deprived of a vote, made a choice to accept the government's support of the poor children's sport training. So, the parents can suffer the consequences of their poor children being deprived of participation in international sporting contests. If the poor children are that upset, well, when they're 18, they can vote to change the government's leadership, now can't they?
The IOC does not control, or organize the Paralympic Games.
They can cast a vote, but it does no good in a country that is a dictatorship and going to vote is theater because even if every single person votes against the dictator, the dictator still wins.
Fine. I wonder, when are the US athletes going to be excluded from all sport events for invasion of Iraq? After all, if Russian athletes are representative of Russian government, so are US athletes representatives of US government. It seems to me that @Asli was right - there seems to be double standard in punishing some countries and not punishing other countries for the same thing. Don’t get me wrong, I am against this war and of course Russia has to pay for it, but it seems to me that some posters are very keen to punish Russia including punishing kids who never had any influence over what is going on, and yet their own country got away with exactly the same without anyone being punished at all.
It's unfortunate but I don't see it as some great injustice. After all the Putin government acted with deliberate malice and had no regard for all of the upended and lost lives of the Ukrainians. Applying pressure from every angle is the only civilized response to such an act of treachery.
Whereas US president did not act with malice, without any regard for lost lives of people from Iraq? Or don’t they matter? Do you consider them less than Ukrainians? Just curious why is it ok for you to punish Russian kids for actions of their president, but you don’t mind that US got away with exactly that. By the way, I believe British army also took part, so they should be punished too, alongside the USA. So did Australia and Poland. If we ban any sportsmen for the actions of their country, I wonder if there will be anyone left competing at the world championships!
Because at the time, it was though that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? The US did NOT go in there "just because" to go destroy some other country for no reason other than inflated ego! The two situations are not even remotely comparable. Virtually the ENTIRE world is sanctioning Russia right now. That did NOT happen to the US, because the situations were not even remotely the same.
Sure, and then it suddenly became clear that they didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. So someone lied, and the athletes should have been punished for this lie… Because of this lie, people from Iraq lost their lives!
I don't think it was really all that clear immediately after the invasion of Iraq that there were no WMDs - and social media was in it's infancy at the time so information wasn't as readily and easily shared as it is nowadays. I really do understand what you're saying but I pointed out that the situations aren't comparable for other reasons, not the least of which is the violation of the Olympic Truce. Beyond that, Putin got away with invading Crimea in 2014 right after the Sochi Olympics. The fact that he's pulled this exact same stunt again, 8 years later, really is galling and a step too far, IMO.
Don't be daft, it's not about punishing the athletes and you know it.
Ban China for present-day genocide…..
Oh yes you are.
Suggestion denied. It's 2022, and the subject at hand is combatting pure, unadulterated EVIL. Russian athletes, regardless of how much they want to plead innocent victim, can sit home and suck it up while they think about Ukraine athletes and their families, who have missiles, rockets, bombs, and rifle fire lobbed at them.
Excellent points.
Same. Person was able to take the train to Helsinki and fly home from there. The border is still open so a car service would also work.
We do not have evidence for that. That is a rather political designation by the U.S. and unfortunately did not help with solving anything on the ground. You need to question the IOC for its lack of stance on it since many on this forum did express their support for sanctions of various forms against the Chinese government. An encouraging sign is that China is finally allowing the UN High Commissioner into Xinjiang. Russia needs to stop its action and retract its public statements before any consideration of lessening or lifting sanctions.
So how do you know what all the posters on FSU were doing 20 years ago?
Okay. I vote for that!
