The international community should block the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes in the Olympic Games and other international competitions as long as Moscow continues its war against Ukraine, said the former captain of Belarus’s women’s national basketball team.
Katsyaryna Snytsina, who quit the Belarusian squad in March 2021 to protest the actions of authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka and who now plays for the London Lions in the Women’s British Basketball League (WBBL), told RFE/RL’s Belarus Service that “we must continue to insist on this position.”
“We must continue reminding people that a war is not just some event, but that it means death,” the 38-year-old power forward said. “And athletes are an important part of the dictatorial machine.”
“As long as the war continues, Belarusian athletes cannot be allowed to appear, particularly in the Olympic Games,” Snytsina said.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the country’s athletes and those of ally Belarus, which allowed Russia to launch attacks from its territory, have been barred from major international competitions or have had to participate without national symbols. Ukraine has urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to bar them from the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
The IOC has yet to make a final decision on whether or how these athletes will be able to compete in Paris. The committee has only said that it will make the decision at “the appropriate time.” In March, however, the IOC authorized individual sports federations to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete as “individual neutral athletes,” excluding those who “actively supported the war.”
Last month, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) voted to allow them to participate as “neutrals, without national emblems, flags, or anthems” and without making political statements or gestures.
At a press conference in Moscow on October 5, Russian Olympic Committee head Stanislav Pozdnyakov said he believes the IOC intends to follow the IPC’s lead and that “our athletes are not welcome at the Olympics.” He also expressed concern for the “safety” of Russian athletes who agree to participate as individuals.
“Even if you take away their flags and they have to appear under a neutral banner without their national anthems, I think it would be a concession on the part of those who oppose such forces,” Snytsina argued.
'I Represented A European Dictatorship'
After Lukashenka was declared the winner of the August 2020 election, tens of thousands of Belarusians rallied for months, saying the poll was rigged. Snytsina, who was playing abroad and was not in Belarus at the time, joined hundreds of Belarusian athletes who signed a petition at the time, calling the official results illegal.
When she quit the national team the following March, she said she could not represent the country while its citizens "are being tortured and oppressed and held in jails where they are being killed and crippled."
Looking back, Snytsina regrets her past representing her country internationally.
“I don’t want to say I was used, but I represented a European dictatorship,” she told RFE/RL.
She is cautiously optimistic about Belarus's democratic opposition and the changes she sees in society there. She compares the process to a 42-kilometer marathon, saying she “hopes” the country is “somewhere around the 20-kilometer mark.”
“People are now at the stage of the marathon when they have begun to conserve their strength to make the whole distance,” she said. “It is harder for us than it is for real marathon runners because they know where the race ends. We do not.”
Last week, Snytsina publicly came out as gay during a talk-show interview. She told RFE/RL that, for her, "being with a woman is freedom."
“It is my choice, free from the dictates of society or anyone else’s rules,” she told RFE/RL. “This is what I have chosen, what is best for me. But a dictator doesn’t like such things.”
“LGBT people have an internal freedom that enables them to be what they are and accept themselves,” she added. “That is their freedom. But dictatorships fight against freedom.”
She said she plans to retire from basketball after the current season, although she does not yet know what the future holds for her.
