Tag: europe

Spain expels two US embassy staff for allegedly bribing intelligence agents | Espionage News

The Spanish paper El Pais reports that the US quietly withdrew two staff workers at the request of Spain’s government.

Spain has ejected two staff workers at the United States embassy, following allegations that they attempted to bribe Spanish intelligence officers in exchange for secrets.

Spanish Defence Minister Margarita Robles said on Thursday that Spain had filed a complaint to the US, but that the incident would not harm diplomatic relations between the two countries.

“Spain and the United States are friends, allies and partners,” she told reporters. “When there are issues that may affect us, they are discussed and dealt with, but in no way does that influence the relations we have.”

The newspaper El Pais reported that two unnamed embassy workers were discreetly removed at the request of Madrid, following an investigation that concluded that they had obtained information from Spanish intelligence agents for a “large sum”.

Robles confirmed that a judicial inquiry was looking into “irregular conduct” at the CNI, Spain’s intelligence agency. The content of the material shared with the two embassy workers is not clear.

El Pais reported that a CNI chief of area and his assistant were arrested two months ago, but a court ordered that their case remain secret. The paper added that US Ambassador Julissa Reynoso denied any knowledge or involvement when summoned by Spanish authorities.

“At least two US agents stationed at the US Embassy in Madrid, who were directly involved in the recruitment of CNI spies, have been discreetly expelled from Spain,” the El Pais story reads.

While attempting to recruit agents from a country’s intelligence apparatus is a form of spycraft typical of relations between hostile powers, El Pais called the incident “an openly hostile act” not befitting of “friends or allies”.

The Spanish outlet El Confidencial first reported about the arrest of the two CNI workers on Monday. Asked about the incident on Monday, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan declined to comment.

The US embassy in Madrid and Spain’s foreign ministry have also declined to comment on the affair.

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Iran’s Raisi says ‘genocide’ under way in Gaza as he meets Russia’s Putin | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Putin hosts Raisi as part of a blitz round of Middle East diplomacy after visits to the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has condemned Israel’s assault on Gaza as he met Russian President Vladimir Putin for talks in Moscow.

Putin hosted Raisi on Thursday as part of a blitz round of Middle East diplomacy that also included visits to United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in efforts to raise Moscow’s profile as a power broker in the region.

Putin has cast the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza as a failure of US diplomacy and suggested Moscow could be a mediator in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Greeting Raisi at the Kremlin, Putin said it was important to discuss the situation in the Middle East, especially in the Palestinian territories.

Raisi responded via a translator: “What is happening in Palestine and Gaza is, of course, genocide and a crime against humanity.”

“It’s not just a regional issue, it’s an issue for the entire humankind,” he told Putin, adding that “it’s necessary to find a quick solution.”

Iran backs the Palestinian group Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip. Russia has relations with all the key players in the Middle East including Hamas and Israel, the latter of which it angered by hosting a Hamas delegation in Moscow in October.

Some analysts have said the Gaza conflict has benefitted Russia by distracting world attention from the war in Ukraine and enabling Moscow to align itself with other developing countries in solidarity with the Palestinians.

On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a rare one-day lightning tour to the Middle East during which he visited Saudi Arabia after a short trip to the United Arab Emirates.

Putin’s trip to the region is his first since July 2022, when he met Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran.

The Russian leader has made few international trips after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for him in March, accusing him of deporting Ukrainian children.

Like North Korea, whose leader Kim Jong Un held a summit with Putin in Russia’s far east in September, Iran is an avowed enemy of the United States and has the capacity to provide Moscow with military hardware for its war in Ukraine, where Russia has made extensive use of Iranian drones.

The US has voiced strong concern about the growing military cooperation between Moscow and Tehran and warned that Iran may be preparing to provide Russia with advanced ballistic missiles for use in the war in Ukraine.

The Kremlin last month said Russia and Iran were developing their relations, “including in the field of military-technical cooperation”, but declined to comment on the issue.

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Student shoots classmate dead in Russian school before killing herself | Crime News

Investigators say 14-year-old also wounded five children using a pump-action shotgun as interior ministry probes motive.

A 14-year-old girl shot a fellow pupil dead and wounded five other children before killing herself at a school in the Russian city of Bryansk, officials said.

Investigators on Thursday said they were working to establish the motive for the shooting as well as how the student gained access to the pump-action shotgun which she used to shoot at her classmates.

“According to preliminary investigation data, a 14-year-old girl brought a pump-action shotgun to school, from which she fired shots at her classmates,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.

“As a result of the incident, two people were killed (one of them was the shooter), five [children] were injured and have now been taken to a medical facility,” according to the committee.

The authorities did not name the shooter but said the victim was a female classmate at Gymnasium Number Five, a secondary school in a Bryansk suburb.

The incident is a “terrible tragedy”, said Alexander Bogomaz, governor of the region, one of several southern regions that have seen cross-border attacks in the course of the war with Ukraine. Bryansk city has been targeted in occasional shelling and drone attacks.

Video shared by the RIA Novosti state news agency showed children cowered in a classroom behind a door barricaded with upended desks and chairs during the attack.

“Together with law enforcement agencies, we are determining the circumstances under which the student was able to obtain and bring a weapon to school,” Bogomaz said.

Investigators were also questioning the father of the attacker, according to Russian media.

Russia’s interior ministry said it was looking into a motive for the shooting.

School and university shootings are relatively rare and recent in Russia, and the country has strict restrictions on civilian firearm ownership.

People can buy some categories of guns, however, for hunting, self-defence or sport, once would-be owners have passed tests and met other requirements.

At least 17 people were killed, including 11 children, on September 26, 2022, when a 34-year-old gunman opened fire at a school in Izhevsk city, 960km (600 miles) east of the capital, Moscow.

On May 11 last year, a teenager in Kazan killed seven children and two teachers at his former school, prompting President Vladimir Putin to further tighten gun-ownership laws.

Russia raised the legal age to buy firearms from 18 to 21 after the Kazan shooting.

In Russia’s deadliest school shooting, an 18-year-old college student killed 20 people, including himself, and wounded 67 in the town of Kerch in annexed Crimea in 2018.

The first school shooting in Russia took place in 2014.

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Russia set to hold presidential election in March 2024 | Elections News

Vladimir Putin is widely expected to run again after constitutional reforms he orchestrated in 2020 to help extend his term.

Russia’s upper house of parliament has voted to set the date for the country’s next presidential election for March 17, 2024, potentially moving President Vladimir Putin closer to a fifth term in office.

Members of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly voted unanimously on Thursday to approve a decree setting the date.

“With this decision, we are effectively launching the start of the election campaign,” said Valentina Matviyenko, head of the chamber.

For the first time, residents of the parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions of Ukraine annexed by Russia would take part in the vote, she added.

“By choosing a head of state together, we fully share the common responsibility and common destiny of our fatherland,” Matviyenko said.

Although Putin, 71, has not yet announced his intention to run again, he is widely expected to do so in the coming days now that the date has been set.

Under constitutional reforms he orchestrated in 2020, he is eligible to seek two more six-year terms after his current one expires next year.

At the time, Russians voted overwhelmingly in favour of the constitutional changes, but critics said the outcome was falsified on an industrial scale.

Possible candidates

Having established tight control over Russia’s political system, Putin’s victory is all but assured if he runs.

Prominent critics who could challenge him on the ballot are either in jail or living abroad, and most independent media have been banned.

Neither the costly, drawn-out military campaign in Ukraine that began in February 2022, nor a failed rebellion in June by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin appear to have affected his high approval ratings reported by independent pollsters.

The March election will likely clear the way for him to remain in power at least until 2030. And if he contests and wins another election after that, he could rule until the age of 83.

Who would challenge him on the ballot remains unclear.

Two people have announced plans to run: former lawmaker Boris Nadezhdin, who holds a seat on a municipal council in the Moscow region, and Yekaterina Duntsova, a journalist and lawyer from the Tver region north of Moscow, who was once a member of a local legislature.

For both, getting on the ballot could be an uphill battle. Unless one of five political parties that have seats in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house, nominates them as their candidate, they would have to gather tens of thousands of signatures across multiple regions.

According to Russian election laws, candidates put forward by a party that is not represented in the State Duma or at least a third of regional legislatures have to submit at least 100,000 signatures from 40 or more regions. Those running independently of any party would need a minimum of 300,000 signatures from 40 regions or more.

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Republicans block Ukraine funding over US-Mexico border despite Biden pleas | Russia-Ukraine war News

Republican senators in the United States have blocked $106bn in new funding for Ukraine and Israel, rejecting appeals from President Joe Biden amid anger over the exclusion of immigration reforms they had demanded as part of the package.

Biden had earlier warned of dire consequences for Kyiv – and a “gift” to Russia’s Vladimir Putin – if Congress failed to pass the measure, which includes about $61bn to help Ukraine keep up pressure on Russia during the freezing winter months, as well as help for Israel and Gaza.

“They’re willing to literally kneecap Ukraine on the battlefield and damage our national security in the process,” Biden said.

The entire 49-strong Republican minority in the upper chamber voted against the proposal, pointing to a lack of government action on the estimated 10,000 migrants crossing from Mexico into the US every day.

“Everyone has been very, very clear on this to say we’re standing firm. Now is the moment,” Senator James Lankford, a lead Republican negotiator on immigration and border issues, told Fox Business ahead of the vote.

“We’re completely out of control at the southern border, and it’s time to resolve this.”

Citing aid for Israel, independent senator Bernie Sanders also voted against the bill, which needed 60 votes to pass.

Biden has earlier pleaded with Republicans over the package, warning that a victory for Russia over Ukraine would leave Moscow in a position to attack NATO allies and draw US troops into a war.

“If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there,” Biden said. Putin will attack a NATO ally, he predicted, and then “we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops”, Biden said.

“We can’t let Putin win,” he said.

Border security with Mexico has emerged as a major stumbling block to continued support for Ukraine, even as the White House warned this week that funds designated for providing aid to Ukraine would run out by the end of the year.

House and Senate Republicans are backing renewed construction of a border wall, former President Donald Trump’s signature policy, while deeming large numbers of migrants ineligible for asylum and reviving a controversial policy under which asylum seekers are told to remain in Mexico while their immigration case is heard.

Biden said he was willing to make “significant” compromises on the border issue but said Republicans would not get everything they wanted. He did not provide details.

“This has to be a negotiation,” he said.

Clock ticking

Biden, who had discussed Ukraine in a virtual summit with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and G7 leaders earlier on Wednesday, said the US and its allies were prepared to continue supporting Ukraine in its 22-month war against Russia, which currently occupies about a fifth of Ukrainian territory.

Zelenskyy warned the G7 that Moscow was counting on Western unity to “collapse” and said Russia had ramped up pressure on the front lines of the conflict.

The precarious prospects for the aid package had been clear since a classified Ukraine briefing for senators on Tuesday saw several Republicans walk out, angry that there was no talk of border security.

Zelenskyy had been due to address the meeting via video link but cancelled at the last minute.

Senators of both parties have acknowledged the need to move quickly to secure a deal given that Congress has just a handful more days in session before the end of the year.

Republican negotiators were expected to send a new proposal to Democrats after the failed vote.

The president’s willingness to directly engage on the issue carried some political risk with some Democrats and migrant advocates urging him to reject sweeping conservative demands on immigration – which they say are akin to closing the border.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who voted against aid to Kyiv before he took on the job, has made clear he will not agree to send any more money without “transformative” changes to border policy.

“The American people deserve nothing less,” Johnson said in a statement.

The Louisiana Republican has also declared that any Israel aid needs to be offset with spending cuts, a policy Democrats, the White House and most Senate Republicans oppose.

Even amid the disagreement over the new funding package, the US unveiled aid for Kyiv worth $175m from the dwindling supply of money that has already been approved.

It includes HIMARS rockets, shells, missiles and ammunition.

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Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 652 | Russia-Ukraine war News

As the war enters its 652nd day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Thursday, December 7, 2023.

Fighting

  • Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Ukrainians that Kyiv would defeat Russia and win a fair peace in an unusual early-morning video that showed him walking through Kyiv on his way to pay his respects to fallen soldiers on what Ukraine marks as Armed Forces Day. “It has been difficult, but we have persevered,” he said. “No matter how difficult it is, we will get there. To our borders, to our people. To our peace. Fair peace. Free peace. Against all odds.”
  • Russia launched a major drone attack on southern, central and eastern Ukrainian regions, damaging privately owned and commercial buildings as well as key infrastructure. Air defences shot down 41 of 48 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched from Russia’s western Kursk region and Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.
  • Russian television broadcast footage of what it said was a US-built Bradley infantry fighting vehicle captured on the front line in Ukraine’s Luhansk region. Channel 1 said the Bradley, one of several dozen supplied to Ukraine this year, was immobilised by Russian fire and abandoned by its crew. The broadcaster suggested that its capture would enable Russian forces to identify the vehicle’s vulnerabilities.

Politics and diplomacy

  • Leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) countries met virtually with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a show of solidarity and agreed to a new ban on Russian diamonds. The countries will ban non-industrial Russian diamonds by January and those sold by third countries from March, they said in a joint statement. The G7 includes Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
  • Legislation to provide $106bn in new security assistance for Ukraine and Israel was blocked in the US Senate as Republicans pressed their demands for tougher measures to control immigration at the US border with Mexico.
  • Illia Kyva, a former pro-Russian member of Ukraine’s parliament sentenced in absentia to 14 years in prison for charges including treason and incitement to violence, was shot dead near Moscow.  News agencies, including Reuters and AFP, quoted sources saying Kyva was killed by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
  • Oleg Popov, a deputy in the pro-Moscow regional parliament in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, was killed in a car bombing. Ukraine did not immediately comment on Popov’s reported death.
Leaders of the G7 agreed on a ban of Russian diamonds at a virtual meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy [Ukrainian Presidential Press Service via Reuters]
  • The US charged four Russia-affiliated soldiers with war crimes over their treatment of a US citizen kidnapped from his home in the village of Mylove in southern Ukraine in April 2022 and held captive for 10 days. The Justice Department accused the four of beating and torturing the man, who was not named, and staging a mock execution.
  • Kathmandu District Police Chief Bhupendra Khatri said 10 people had been arrested in connection with the illegal recruitment of young men from Nepal into the Russian army. The country this week told Moscow not to recruit its citizens into the Russian army, and to send home any Nepali soldier in its ranks after six citizens were killed while fighting in Ukraine.
  • The UK announced 46 new measures against individuals and groups it said were involved in Russia’s military supply chains. Those sanctioned included businesses operating in China, Turkey, Serbia, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan, Britain’s foreign ministry said. The Chinese embassy in London said it condemned the move and would counter anything that undermined its interests.

Weapons

  • Ukraine’s Defence Minister Rustem Umerov met US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon as Austin announced an additional new $175m aid package for Kyiv, including High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, and also anti-armour systems and high-speed anti-radiation missiles. The package will be provided through presidential drawdown authority, or PDA, which takes weapons from existing US stockpiles
  • A joint US-Ukraine defence conference was held behind closed doors in Washington. Zelenskyy told delegates that Kyiv was ramping up domestic military production. “Ukraine does not wish to rely solely on partners. Ukraine aspires to and is capable of becoming a security donor to all of our neighbours once it has ensured its own safety,” he said.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov met US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon [Roberto Schmidt/AFP]
  • At the conference, representatives from the US and Ukrainian governments signed an agreement to ramp up weapons co-production and data sharing. Areas of concentration include “air defence systems, repair and sustainment and production of critical munitions”, Jason Israel, the White House National Security Council’s Director for Defense Policy and Strategy, told the audience.
  • The Reuters news agency, citing documents it had seen, said officials from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence also presented a new list of US weapons it says it needs to fight the Russian military. The list included sophisticated air defence systems, F-18 fighter jets, a variety of drones, and Apache and Blackhawk helicopters.

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Bosnian Serb leader Dodik stands trial for defying peace envoy | Politics News

Dodik called the envoy a ‘stinker’ as he demanded the trial be relocated to the capital of Bosnia’s Serbia entity.

The trial of Bosnian Serb leader Milord Dodik has opened at a court in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, where the contentious leader is facing charges of ignoring rulings from an international envoy that oversees the country’s peace accords.

Dodik made a brief appearance at the trial on Wednesday before demanding that it be transferred to Banja Luka, the capital of Bosnia’s Serbia entity, Republika Srpska (RS).

As a result, the trial was adjourned, with its future location uncertain.

The court hearing comes after months of tensions following Dodik’s signing of legislation that rejected the decisions made by Bosnia’s international high representative Christian Schmidt and the constitutional court.

Dodik chided Schmidt and US Ambassador to Bosnia Michael Murphy for their “colonial behaviour” as he exited the court.

“The stinker named Christian Schmidt and the jerk named Murphy are trying to make life miserable in Bosnia,” said Dodik.

Schmidt oversees the Dayton Agreement that ended the country’s bloody civil war in the 1990s.

In July, the high representative struck down the laws Dodik passed, which the Bosnian Serb leader went on to sign anyway.

He now faces five years in prison and a ban on participating in politics if convicted, as the international envoy has the authority to strip a political leader of their power.

Dodik has denounced his trial as political persecution.

A controversial figure

The Bosnian Serb leader has been a controversial figure throughout his career, having served as prime minister several times, as well as president of RS and co-president of Bosnia.

He has refused to recognise Schmidt’s authority and has been sanctioned by the US, which has accused him of corruption and threatening the stability and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. An ally of the Kremlin, Dodik has long stoked ethnic tensions.

Since his indictment, he has also ramped up his demand that the RS secede from Bosnia.

Bosnia has a weak central government, governed by two bodies created under the Dayton Accords, a Muslim-Croat federation and RS.

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Pro-Russian former Ukrainian parliamentarian shot dead near Moscow | Russia-Ukraine war News

Illia Kyva, declared a traitor by Ukraine, has been shot dead in a park in Odintsovo region in the southwest of Moscow.

A former pro-Russian member of Ukraine’s parliament has been shot dead near Moscow in an assassination claimed by Kyiv.

Illia Kyva, declared a traitor by Ukraine, was shot dead in a park in the Odintsovo region southwest of Moscow on Wednesday.

Russian investigators said they have opened an investigation and a hunt for the suspect.

“An unknown person fired shots at the victim from an unidentified weapon. The man died on the spot from his injuries,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.

News agencies, including Reuters and AFP, quoted sources saying Kyva was killed by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).

Kyva was a member of Ukraine’s parliament before Moscow invaded in February 2022, but had been in Russia throughout the war and frequently criticised Ukrainian authorities online.

He had been sentenced in absentia by a Ukrainian court to 14 years in prison for charges including treason and incitement to violence.

The day before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Kyva said the country had been “soaked by Nazism” and needed “liberating” by Russia – echoing talking points regularly advanced by Russian officials and on state TV.

Speaking on national TV, Ukraine’s military intelligence spokesperson Andriy Yusov said: “We can confirm that Kyva is done. Such a fate will befall other traitors of Ukraine, as well as the henchmen of the [Russian President Vladimir] Putin regime.”

Yusov did not say who was behind the assassination.

In a separate incident, a proxy lawmaker in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region was also killed in a car bombing attack on Wednesday, Russian investigators said.

Oleg Popov, who served as a deputy in the pro-Moscow Luhansk regional parliament, was killed after the “detonation of an unidentified device in a car”, Russia’s Investigative Committee said, without providing more details.

Spate of assassinations

Kyiv used to rarely comment on whether it was behind the killings of pro-Russian figures, both inside Russia and in parts of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces.

But lately, it has started to claim responsibility for a number of attacks and openly threatened to hunt down other “collaborators” and “traitors”.

Moscow has previously said Ukraine was behind other audacious assassinations deep inside Russia’s borders.

In August 2022, Russian nationalist Darya Dugina was killed outside Moscow in a car bombing, while an explosion at a Saint Petersburg cafe in April killed Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky.

Ukraine has not publicly claimed responsibility for those attacks, though US intelligence and media reports have linked Kyiv to them.

Several lower-ranking Ukrainian officials and politicians who have welcomed Russia’s invasion and worked for Russian-backed authorities in occupied parts of Ukraine have also been killed.

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Putin makes rare trip to Middle East to meet with UAE and Saudi leaders | Vladimir Putin News

The Russian leader has been bolstering his partnerships with Gulf nations as Moscow faces growing isolation by the West.

Escorted by four fighter jets, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a rare one-day lightning tour to the Middle East during which he visited the United Arab Emirates before departing for Saudi Arabia.

Putin landed on Wednesday in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, which is hosting the United Nations COP28 climate talks.

He was escorted to the presidential palace, where he was greeted with a 21-gun salute and a flyby of UAE military jets trailing smoke in the colours of the Russian flag.

The Gulf nation’s President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan called Putin his “dear friend”.

“I am happy to meet you again,” Sheikh Mohammed said. He later issued a statement saying they discussed “the importance of strengthening dialogue and cooperation to ensure stability and progress”.

The Russian leader echoed those sentiments.

“Our relations, largely due to your position, have reached an unprecedentedly high level,” Putin told Sheikh Mohammed. “The UAE is Russia’s main trading partner in the Arab world.”

The meeting was part of Russia’s quest to stake out a more influential role in the Middle East, with oil cooperation and the Israel-Hamas war on the agenda.

The two leaders discussed, among other things, bilateral cooperation in the energy industry and advanced technologies, according to Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency.

Putin then jetted off to Riyadh, where he will meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, TASS reported – their first face-to-face meeting since October 2019.

Putin’s meeting with the prince, known as MBS, came after oil prices fell, despite a pledge by OPEC+, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) as well as allies led by Russia, to further reduce output.

However, it was not immediately clear what Putin, who has rarely left Russia since the start of the Ukraine war, intended to raise specifically about oil or geopolitics with the crown prince of the world’s largest crude exporter.

On Thursday, Putin will host the Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow. Following that, the UAE will welcome Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday and Saturday.

Putin’s rare trip to the region is his first since July 2022, when he met Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran.

The Russian leader has made few international trips after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for him in March, accusing him of deporting Ukrainian children.

Neither the UAE nor Saudi Arabia have signed the ICC’s founding treaty, and are not obligated to arrest him if he enters their territories.

On Israel’s two-month bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip, Putin has decried the war as a failure of the United States diplomacy. He has suggested Moscow could instead play the role of a mediator due to its friendly ties with both Israel and the Palestinians.

Putin’s Middle East trip is also a part of his efforts to demonstrate that Western attempts to isolate Moscow through sanctions for its war on Ukraine have failed.

“He seems to be pretty delighted to be on the ground in Abu Dhabi,” said James Bays, Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor. It is unclear how this visit will be seen in Washington, as the UAE also has close ties with the US, he added.

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Sports bodies ask IOC to allow Russian, Belarusian athletes at Olympics | Olympics

Athletes from both countries have faced sanctions in multiple sports but may be allowed to compete at the Paris 2024 Games under a neutral flag.

Representatives of international sports federations and national Olympic committees have called for Russian and Belarusian athletes to be admitted under a neutral flag for the 2024 Games in Paris “as soon as possible”.

Athletes have moved closer to being allowed to compete as neutrals at next year’s Paris Games after an endorsement at the Olympic Summit in Lausanne on Tuesday.

At the summit, athlete representatives also asked for “clarity” on the issue, according to a statement published after the meeting.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) still has to make a final ruling on whether athletes from Russia and Belarus, a key ally for Moscow in its offensive on Ukraine, will be permitted to compete next summer.

The IOC said international Olympic summer sports federations, continental associations of national Olympic committees, and the IOC Athletes’ Commission backed such a decision and now want a quick final decision as Olympic qualifiers are taking place.

However, the IOC has repeated its stance that a decision will be taken “at the appropriate time”.

Athletes from the two countries have faced sanctions from a multitude of sports events since Russia launched its assault on Ukraine in February 2022.

However, several Olympic sports have eased restrictions over the past year, allowing them to return to competition under certain conditions.

In March, the IOC lifted an outright ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes, allowing them to compete as neutral athletes provided they did not support the Ukraine conflict and had no ties to the military.

The IOC has “confirmed that the participation of such AINs [individual neutral athletes] in the Olympic Games could happen only under the existing strict conditions”.

“Neither the qualification system developed by the respective International Federations nor the number of allocated quota places to a sport will be changed for AINs with a Russian or Belarusian passport,” its statement added.

The IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) on October 12 for violating the territorial integrity of the membership of Ukraine by recognising illegally annexed territories.

ROC has recognised regional organisations from four Ukrainian territories annexed since Russia’s invasion began in 2022.

Russia’s Olympic body last month launched an appeal against its suspension by the IOC at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

In September, officials voted to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete at next year’s Paralympics under a neutral flag after deciding against an outright ban.

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