By Julien Pretot
PARIS (Reuters) – Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo pledged her support to Ukraine on Wednesday as she welcomed a delegation of mayors from the country and said Russian and Belarusian athletes should have been banned from the Olympics and Paralympics.
Some 88 Russians and eight Belarusians are taking part in the Paralympic Games in Paris but compete under a neutral banner.
Their podium finishes are not recorded on the medals table and if a neutral athlete wins a gold medal, the Paralympic anthem is played.
The International Paralympic Committee in 2023 voted against maintaining a full ban of the two countries, imposed after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and allowed them to compete as neutrals.
A similar decision was taken for the Olympics, with the International Olympic Committee saying athletes should not be punished for the actions of their governments. Russia called that decision unacceptable and the conditions for participation discriminatory.
“I would have wished that there would not even be a neutral banner, but at least it means they are not celebrated,” Hidalgo told the mayors.
Some 140 athletes from Ukraine have been taking part in the Paralympics.
After Ihar Boki won the S13 50-metre freestyle swimming, Ukrainians Illia Yaremenko and Oleksii Virchenko, who clinched silver and bronze, did not pose alongside the Belarusian and walked away from the podium after the Paralympic anthem was played.
“You are our friends. We’ve been on your side since the first day of the Russian aggression on Ukraine,” Hidalgo said at the gathering promoting the integration of people with disabilities and impairments.
The Ukrainian delegation included the mayor of Poltava, where on Tuesday at least 50 people were killed and 271 wounded when Russia hit a military institute with two ballistic missiles in the war’s deadliest single attack this year.
“We’ve been hit but we’re all the more convinced that we will win (the war),” Kateryna Yamshchikova, the town’s mayor, said.
Ukraine will also need to deal with those who will be left with disabilities after the war.
“Our task is to win (the war) and we must create acceptable conditions for people with disabilities so they can feel like any other citizen in our society,” Karkhiv mayor Ihor Terekhov said.
(Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Alison Williams)
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