On March 30, Bach called “deplorable” the criticism by European governments of the push to reintegrate Russian and Belarusian athletes into world sports before the 2024 Paris Games.

According to agency reports, the IOC president also suggested those governments which seemed to include his own home country Germany — had “double standards” for focusing on athletes from countries involved in just one of about 70 wars and armed conflicts ongoing in the world.

Bach detailed IOC advice to individual Olympic sports bodies of conditions by which they could decide to approve individual Russian or Belarusians to compete as neutral athletes, while continuing a ban from team sports.

The IOC said sports should exclude athletes who have military links, though Bach clarified on March 30 that this likely should not apply to those who did one year of mandatory service. “We have taken note of some negative reactions by some European governments in particular,” Bach said at a news conference after an IOC executive board meeting.

Germany sports minister Nancy Faeser had said earlier that the IOC’s shift from its position a year ago to exclude all athletes and teams from Russia and Belarus as “a slap in the face of Ukrainian athletes.”

“Those who let the warmonger Russia use international competitions for its propaganda are damaging the Olympic idea of peace and international understanding,” Faeser said, echoing previous comments from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and allies including Poland.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry had said that the IOC “avoids the topic of (Russian) war crimes” and showed “wilful ignorance of the war reality.”

Bach responded it was deplorable that some governments “do not want to respect the majority within the Olympic movement and of all the stakeholders nor the autonomy of sport which they are praising and requesting from other countries. It’s deplorable that these governments don’t address the question of double standards with which we have been confronted,” the German lawyer said.

“We have not seen a single comment from them about their attitude about the participation of athletes whose countries are involved in the other 70 wars and armed conflicts in the world.”

The Paris Olympics is the fifth straight Summer or Winter Games since the steroid-tainted 2014 Sochi Olympics where Russia has faced calls to be excluded or must compete as a neutral team without national symbols such as the flag and anthem. The previous sanctions were because of state-backed doping and cover-ups.

Still, criticism of sports officials was only hardening their stance against lawmakers, Bach suggested, and “strengthened the unity.”

“It cannot be up to the governments to decide which athletes can participate in which competition,” he said.

The final decision on which Russian and Belarusian teams can compete in international events, including qualification for the Paris Olympics, is for the governing bodies of individual sports.

One sport body to follow Bach was the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) which said Russian and Belarusians could compete again as neutrals as soon as May.

The ITTF cited the example of “ping pong diplomacy,” when American table tennis players travelled to China in 1971 to play exhibition games which helped thaw relations between their countries.

However, World Athletics said last week it will continue its more than year-long exclusion for “the foreseeable future.”

Two IOC members with connections to the Russian military — including women’s pole vault world record holder Yelena Isinbayeva, who has an army rank — have had their status referred to the Olympic body’s ethics commission for evaluation, Bach said.

The IOC ethics panel chaired by former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has no power to impose sanctions and can only recommend actions to the Bach-chaired executive board.

Ban visited Bucha in Ukraine last August and called the mass killings there by Russian forces a “horrendous atrocity” and a crime against humanity.

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Yes, the Russia-Ukraine war is still on. sad that it is, it is getting as tedious as the Covid-19 pandemic. But lives are being lost, the West is still issuing strong messages against Russia and against Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is still growing as the Avenger-in-Chief.

Here is a timeline, since we last reported on the war:

TIMELINE
April 1: The governor of Ukraine’s southern port of Odessa says air defences thwart an attempted attack on “critical infrastructure facilities, the destruction of which could be dangerous for the civilian population”.

Reports say that Russia is using proxy groups in Syria to recruit fighters for Ukraine.

April 2: As Russian troops withdraw from Bucha, a town northwest of Kyiv, dozens of corpses in civilian clothes are found on the streets. Bucha’s Deputy Mayor Taras Sapravskyi says there are 300 corpses, of which 50 have been summarily executed. Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk says 280 bodies have been buried in a mass grave in Bucha.

April 3: Human Rights Watch says it has verified and documented war crimes by Russian occupying forces in the areas of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Chernihiv, in northern Ukraine. Local residents told reporters the dead lying on the streets of Bucha were their civilian neighbours and had been killed by Russian forces.

April 4: US President Joe Biden calls for Putin to stand a war crimes tribunal for the alleged Russian killings of civilians in Bucha. Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, says the killings were part of a premeditated plan to imprison or kill dissidents.

April 5: The UN International Organisation for Migration says the number of internally displaced people in Ukraine has reached 7.1 million, a 10 percent increase since March 16.

April 6: The UN’s humanitarian chief, Martin Griffiths, has said he is not optimistic about securing a ceasefire to halt the fighting in Ukraine following high-level talks in Moscow and Kyiv. US plans to starve Russia’s ‘war machine’

US Congress votes to suspend Russia trade status, enact oil ban. EU approves embargo on Russian coal, official says.

April 7: Russia acknowledges ‘significant’ troop losses in Ukraine. UN rights council suspension shows Russia as ‘international pariah’: Biden. Number of Ukrainians arriving at Mexico-US border doubles. Germany to give $2.2bn to federal states to aid Ukraine refugees.

More than 100 attacks on healthcare in Ukraine: WHO

Ukrainian villagers say Russian forces used them as ‘shields’

April 8: New Zealand to release more barrels of crude, diesel. US sanctions Russia’s shipbuilding and diamond mining companies. Zelenskyy says Russia will use dead Ukrainians in propaganda campaign against his country. Armoured vehicles requested by Zelenskyy leave Australia for Ukraine.

April 9: Russian forces fully withdrawn from Ukraine’s north: UK. Russia focusing on control of Luhansk cities, says Ukraine army.

April 9: Russia says it destroyed training centre for ‘mercenaries’ near Odesa.  EU has frozen 30bn euros in Russian, Belarusian assets.

April 10: EU publishes sanctions against Putin’s two daughters. US believes Russia used short-range ballistic missile in Kramatorsk attack.

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