The Hungarian Olympic Committee (MOB) does not like the petition of 31 countries which, at the invitation of the Ukrainians and Poles, plan to boycott the 2024 Paris Games. “The Hungarian Olympic team will be there anyway,” he recently said the president of the MOB, Zsolt Gyulai.
Canoeist, winner of medals at the Olympic Games in Seoul and Barcelona, faithful of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Gyulai recently specified: “We Hungarians look at the Olympics as a last island of peace – and again – I don’t think politics should get involved in sport”. An answer in line with the position that the Budapest government maintains on the ongoing war in Ukraine.
The initiative to plan a boycott of the Olympic Games scheduled in the French capital for next year is due to the fact that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) would be willing to welcome the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes under a neutral flag.
As anticipated, the Poles are among the inspirers of this initiative which aims to be a further clear signal towards Moscow, in particular, and Minsk. Poland regards the geographical proximity of the neighboring Russian giant with an “old” sense of uneasiness; a fear that has historical roots.
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Its position with respect to the crisis in Ukraine differs from that of the Hungarian government authorities which, unlike Warsaw, have close ties to Vladimir Putin’s system. The Polish and Hungarian executives share very similar approaches in terms of power management, a substantial agreement in rejecting what they both see as Brussels’ “dictatorships”, but on the war in Ukraine they are completely different.
In fact, last December, at the usual annual press conference, the Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán criticized Poland for its choice of field with respect to the scenario existing in the second largest state in Europe, not failing however to recall that between Budapest and Warsaw there is a deep and ancient bond of friendship.
Within the Visegrád countries (V4, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland), it is Hungary that has made a separate choice. A choice that the Danube executive defends in the name of the return of peace to Europe, with an active commitment – according to him – for the ceasefire and the reaching of an agreement. He criticizes the sanctions against Russia which he holds responsible for the economic difficulties existing in the country and throughout the Old Continent and rejects the principle of aid to Ukraine in terms of armaments.
“For some time now it has been fashionable to have anti-Russian sentiments”, said Orbán recently, whose government shows, together with its various branches, that it does not share steps aimed at isolating Moscow and discriminating against it in various fields: politics, economy, culture and sport. Hence the Hungarian Olympic Committee’s no to the boycott proposed by the thirty-one on the Ukrainian and Polish “suggestion”. “The international sporting environment is boiling because of the war – Gyulai said again – but the return of the Russians has a certain reason to exist”.
In short, the situation is tangled and promises to become even more so in the short term. Finally, it is legitimate to ask how a way out of this serious crisis can be identified without considering and elaborating its key elements, which are those of a conflict that has been going on for a long time. It was fatal not to have dealt with it in a way functional to détente when the weapons of both forces in the field were still silent.