Ukraine's acting sports minister, Matviy Bidnyi, has criticized Russia's plan to host a rival event to the Paris Olympics in September, calling it a disregard for the principles of Olympism and a mere propaganda tool.
The Friendship Games, scheduled to take place in Russia from Sept. 15-29, offer medals and financial rewards to the winners.
This event is widely viewed as Russia's response to being barred from competing as a nation, along with Belarus, at the Paris Olympics due to the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The ongoing war has resulted in tens of thousands of casualties and significant damage to Ukraine's infrastructure.
Whether Russia eventually boycotts Paris is open to question – its sports minister is opposed to such a move, but Moscow has yet to make its final decision.
Bidnyi views the Friendship Games as an example of Russia being the great disruptor and trying to "utterly destroy order even in sports."
"After Russia, at the state level, decided to fund the so-called Friendship Games and established the so-called 'International Association of Friendship' to organize these Games, it proved to the entire world it disregards the principles of Olympism," Bidnyi told Agence France-Presse (AFP) by email. "It is merely attempting to use sport for its propaganda, to cloak its aggressive war with a facade of sports PR."
The vast majority of Russian and Belarusian athletes fall short of the conditions required to compete as neutrals in Paris, so the Friendship Games offer them a chance to compete in a global multi-sports competition.
International Olympic President Thomas Bach has called the Friendship Games a "cynical attempt to politicize sport," and the IOC has told other nations not to participate.
Bidnyi, who replaced Vadym Gutzeit as sports minister last November, believes the breaking point for the IOC with Russia was the announcement of the Friendship Games, despite Russian protestations, it is not aimed at rivaling the Olympics.
"Significantly, right after the Russian decision to organize the so-called Friendship Games, the IOC intensified the requirements for neutrality criteria," said Bidnyi.
Showing Moscow's fury at being banned from the opening ceremony, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the IOC had "slipped into racism and neo-Nazism."
Bidnyi claims Russian President Vladimir Putin's approach is in line with his disdain for the IOC and the Olympics – quite aside from the state-sponsored doping scandal at the Sochi Winter Games in 2014.
"Only under Putin has Russia violated the Olympic truce three times – in 2008, by attacking Georgia, in 2014 by invading Ukrainian Crimea, and in 2022 by starting a full-scale aggression," he said. "In November 2023, only Russia and Syria were the sole nations that did not support the U.N. resolution on the Olympic truce."
Bidnyi, though, believes the Friendship Games will fail to score the propaganda goal that sports-mad Putin desires.
"There is no alternative to the Olympic Games," said the 44-year-old bodybuilder. "That is why most countries, including Brazil, India and China, have refused to attend these fake Olympics, and the IOC has condemned the attempt to hold such competitions."
Closer to home, Bidnyi underlined how the war unceasingly impinges on the lives of athletes.
"You can't just switch off the TV and think that the war is somewhere far away and doesn't concern you," he said.
He told the story of a young Ukrainian judoka, Anastasiia Chyzhevska, who was born in Lugansk.
"When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014, her family moved to Irpin, near Kyiv.
"Eight years later, the Russian war caught up with her, and Anastasiia had to secretly escape from the occupation. Her father died in this war.
"There are countless such stories."
Ukraine garnered 19 medals at the COVID-19-delayed Tokyo Olympics, but Bidnyi says each athlete's presence in Paris will be a victory.
"Each of them is already a winner. They exhibit an unshakeable will to the entire world."