Paris 2024, the Kremlin on the Carini-Khelif case: “Games that border on perversion”

Paris 2024, the Kremlin on the Carini-Khelif case: “Pseudo-liberal demonstrations bordering on perversion”

“The Olympics are the victim of pseudo-liberal demonstrations that sometimes border on perversion.” Russia takes a stand on the controversy surrounding the boxing match between Angela Carini and Algerian Imane Khelif, excluded from the World Boxing Championships for failing the ‘gender test’, but admitted by the IOC to the Games. The issue was addressed by the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, commenting during a press briefing.

There Russia is not present at Paris 2024 with its own delegation. The athletes compete as ‘independent athletes’. Moscow has not spared harsh judgments on the five-ringed event since the start of the Games, starting with the opening ceremony, which was judged ”a huge failure” by the spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, with the “collapse of transport” due to sabotage on the French railway network and with the “spectators who sat for hours in the pouring rain” while the organizers “had not foreseen the clouds or the tents”. The center of Paris, she added, has been ”transformed into a ghetto” and is ”infested with rats”.

Zakharova did not spare criticism even for the choice of a special torchbearer, stating that the choice was made to have the “drug-addicted rapper Snoop Dogg” carry the Olympic torch. Then, predictably, she criticized the “LGBT parody of the Last Supper”, “a sacred subject for Christians”, with “the apostles represented by transvestites”. The Russian Orthodox Church was also outraged, speaking of a “historical and cultural suicide” in “one of the Christian capitals of European civilization”.