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Putin calls for cleansing sports from politicization and nationalism
They are trying to turn world sport into a platform for geopolitical games and propaganda of unnatural norms, President Vladimir Putin said at the international forum “Russia – a Sports Power”.
"Today they are turning world sports and the Olympic movement into a platform for geopolitical games, rather than a level playing field, imposing a destructive neoliberal program, promoting unnatural norms and pseudo-freedoms, and allowing the overwhelming majority of countries to live for centuries and millennia, living by traditional values and the people of our planet," the Russian leader emphasized.
President Putin called for the politicization of sports and an end to humiliating discrimination based on nationality. According to him, the prospects of world sports require serious and substantive discussion. The President stressed that a split in the international sports family cannot be allowed.
The President also noted that Russia organizes sports competitions on its territory in such a way as to preserve the spirit of non-political sports. He recalled sports competitions organized with the participation of the Russian Federation, in particular the "Games of the Future" held in Kazan. The head of state emphasized that the plan proposed by Russia is, first of all, an additional opportunity for athletes to demonstrate their skills on a field where sports are outside of politics.
“The way we value and love him is free, honest and full of the spirit of friendship and unity,” Putin concluded.
Earlier, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, expressed hope that sport would remain for athletes, and not for "political marginals" and "sexual perverts." The diplomat hoped to preserve the Olympic principle. According to her, people can change their gender, come up with a new identity, and still skate and sled. Let them not encroach on the World Olympic Sports Movement, she said, because they did not create it.
Zakharova expressed confidence that this would pass, since the "voices" had already been heard. She also recalled what happened at the Olympics in Paris. According to her, even absolute skeptics reacted to this.