"Ours are dying, and anyone takes advantage": the Russian gymnastics team harassed athletes because of the Olympics

Valentina Rodionenko, the head coach of the Russian gymnastics team, has joined the harassment of so-called neutral athletes who agree to compete at the 2024 Olympics. The Vladimir Putin regime's henchwoman, who had previously announced the Russian national team's boycott of the 2024 Games, called such athletes traitors and threatened them with consequences for their decisions.

Rodionenko said this in a patriotic commentary to the propaganda news agency RIA Novosti. The former athlete complained that the athletes want to take advantage of the situation and go to Paris without the flag and anthem at a time when Russia is waging a criminal war against Ukraine.

"The Olympic Games are for top athletes, not for just anyone who wants to go there, taking advantage of this situation. This is very wrong. What are we talking about? There are some moral principles. I would not like to talk again about the fact that our best young men are dying over there for our flag and anthem, our homeland. And there is an athlete who just wants to take part in the Olympics without a flag and without an anthem - is that normal? We have forgotten what the Motherland is. Those who go there will regret it later," Rodionenko said.

Earlier, the head of the Russian Rhythmic Gymnastics Federation, Irina Viner, called neutral Russian athletes a "team of homeless." And the champion of Seoul-88, Mikhail Mamiashvili, called the International Olympic Committee (IOC) "a bunch of cultists, scoundrels, fraudsters."

As OBOZ.UA previously reported, Olympic champion Svetlana Zhurova accused the IOC of humiliating Russians and treating them "as second-class citizens." In his turn, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented on the participation of Russian athletes in the 2024 Olympics with the words "spawn of hell".

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