Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, shared his opinion on the change of sports citizenship of Russian athletes. His words convey TASS.
“From my point of view, there is nothing wrong with this, an athlete needs to be realized, my wife Tatyana Navka has an example. He was a Ukrainian, then a Belarusian citizen, and then lived half his life in the United States, as the collapsing USSR did not give him the opportunity to compete. She then became a citizen of the Russian Federation and received a gold medal, ”she said.
At the end of February, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued an appeal to international sports federations, advising them not to allow domestic and Belarusian athletes to participate in any competitions. After that, almost all international sports events in Russia were canceled.
Old Peskov declaration about the need to create a system that would allow athletes to make up for the lack of international starts.