PARIS (AP) — The head of Ukraine’s Olympic delegation touted the limited numbers of Russian athletes at the Paris Olympics — who must compete as neutrals — as war between the two countries grinds on for a third year.
Vadym Guttsait told The Associated Press in an interview that Ukraine began the effort to reduce the number of Russian and Belarusian athletes after the Kremlin's forces invaded Ukraine in 2022 and have kept pressing it nearly until the start of the Games in Paris. Belarus is a key ally of Moscow's.
“During the war, they have no place in the international world,” Guttsait said. “Because every day our people, women and children are killed. Every day they bomb us, and the missiles are flying over our country.”
Only 15 Russian athletes will be competing in the Games and they won’t officially be representing Russia. Russia and neighboring Belarus were banned from sending national teams because of the war in Ukraine, so athletes approved to compete from those countries will do so under neutral status, including tennis star Daniil Medvedev, who won the US Open in 2021.
“It’s nothing,” Guttsait said about Russia’s presence at the 2024 Olympics. “It’s already a victory.”
In Russia, the Olympics are shown in a negative light or not at all in the media. Newspapers' main approach has been to play up the negative, writing about crime in Paris and the inconvenience of barricades placed throughout the city. Russia’s state TV channels aren’t broadcasting any of the events.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova have both slammed the Olympics opening ceremony for LGBTQ-friendly performances. Zakharova also pointed to the rain that soaked the ceremony and issues with the cleanliness of the Seine River.
Russia has refused to send athletes in some sports, including wrestling and judo. The Russian wrestling federation objected to the International Olympic Committee’s choice of which wrestlers to invite, saying the bouts would be incomplete without Russian athletes and that “any sane person understands that the status of the Olympic Games as the most significant sporting event is being questioned.”
Russian athletes' showing in Paris is a big change from the Tokyo Games held in 2021, where Russia had more than 300 athletes participating under the rebranded team name ROC (Russian Olympic Committee) because of a doping scandal. They won 71 medals.
In December 2022, Guttsait started noticing signals that Russian and Belarusian athletes might be allowed to participate in the Paris Games.
At the end of 2022, Ukraine faced missile strikes on its energy infrastructure and spent long winter hours in darkness during resulting blackouts. There was also one of the most grueling battles for the eastern city of Bakhmut, which was one of the first cities reduced to rubble before Russian troops seized it in the spring.
Ukrainian authorities complained that it was unacceptable for Russian athletes to compete at one of the world’s most prestigious sports events, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Guttsait to prevent it.
Guttsait held meetings with representatives of national Olympic committees, wrote letters and took part in Ukraine's International Summit of Sports Ministers.
“It was painstaking work where every day we received feedback from those who either supported us or not,” he said.
Ukraine announced it would boycott the 2024 Olympics if Russian and Belarusian athletes competed under a neutral flag. This decision received widespread global attention amid the war, and that was part of Ukraine’s strategy, Guttsait said.
For the Paris Games, the International Olympic Committee set specific criteria for Russian athletes to qualify, including whether they publicly supported Russia's war.
The war also has affected Ukraine’s Olympic participation, which team was one of the sporting powerhouses that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union. The country will be represented by its smallest delegation in the history of the Summer Games — 140 athletes in 26 sports — that Guttsait attributes to the war.
While in Paris, Guttsait attends competitions every day to support the athletes, donning a panama hat with a Ukrainian coat of arms and Olympic rings.
But Ukrainians cannot leave the war experience at home, and perhaps that made Friday's opening ceremony along the Seine River even more memorable.
“When we were sailing dressed in yellow and blue colors, with our flag. ... It was rewarding, and that people stood up and greeted us with applause,” he recalled. “Our mission at the Olympics is to remind the world that Ukraine survived.”
Vadym Guttsait, Ukrainian Olympic Head, talks to people ahead of the opening event of Ukraine house at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France, Saturday, July 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Hanna Arhirova)
Ukrainian Olympic head Vadym Guttsait poses for a photo at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France, Sunday, July 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Hanna Arhirova)
Ukrainian Olympic head Vadym Guttsait poses for a photo at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France, Sunday, July 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Hanna Arhirova)
Ukrainian Olympic head Vadym Guttsait poses for a photo during the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France, Sunday, July 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Hanna Arhirova)
AVIGNON, France (AP) — A 71-year-old French man acknowledged in court on Tuesday that over nearly a decade, he was drugging his wife at the time and inviting dozens of men to rape her, as well as raping her himself. He pleaded with her, and their three children, for forgiveness.
“Today I maintain that, along with the other men here, I am a rapist,″ Dominique Pélicot told the court. “They knew everything. They can’t say otherwise.”
Dominique Pélicot's testimony is the most important moment so far in a trial that has shocked and gripped France, and raised new awareness about sexual violence. Many also hope his testimony will shed some light — to try to understand the unthinkable.
While he previously confessed to investigators, the court testimony will be crucial for the panel of judges to decide on the fate of some 50 other men standing trial alongside him. Many deny having raped Gisèle Pélicot, saying they were manipulated by her then-husband or claiming they believed she was consenting.
Gisèle Pélicot has become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France for agreeing to waive her anonymity in the case, letting the trial be public, and appearing openly in front of the media. She is expected to speak in court after her ex-husband’s testimony on Tuesday.
Under French law, the proceedings inside the courtroom cannot be filmed or photographed. Dominique Pélicot is brought to the court through a special entrance inaccessible for the media, because he and some other defendants are being held in custody during the trial. Defendants who are not in custody come to the trial wearing surgical masks or hoods to avoid having their faces filmed or photographed.
After days of uncertainty due to his medical state, Dominique Pélicot appeared in court Tuesday and told judges he acknowledged all the charges against him.
His much-awaited testimony was delayed by days after he fell ill, suffering from a kidney stone and urinary infection, his lawyers said.
Seated in a wheelchair, Pélicot spoke to the court for an hour, from his early life to years of abuse against his now ex-wife.
Expressing remorse, his voice trembling and at times barely audible, he sought to explain events that he said scarred his childhood and planted the seed of vice in him.
“One is not born a pervert, one becomes a pervert,” Pélicot told judges, after recounting, sometimes in tears, being raped by a male nurse in hospital when he was 9 years old and then being forced to take part in a gang rape at age 14.
Pélicot also spoke of the trauma endured when his parents took a young girl in the family, and witnessing his father’s inappropriate behavior toward her.
“My father used to do the same thing with the little girl,'' he said. “After my father’s death, my brother said that men used to come to our house.”
At 14, he said, he asked his mother if he could leave the house, but “she didn’t let me.”
“I don’t really want to talk about this, I am just ashamed of my father. In the end, I didn’t do any better,'' he said.
Asked about his feelings toward his wife, Pélicot said she did not deserve what he did.
“From my youth, I remember only shocks and traumas, forgotten partly thanks to her. She did not deserve this, I acknowledge it,” he said in tears.
At that moment, Gisèle Pélicot, standing across the room, facing him across a group of dozens of defendants sitting in between them, put her sunglasses back on.
Later, Dominique Pélicot said, “I was crazy about her. She replaced everything. I ruined everything.”
A security agent caught Pélicot in 2020 filming videos under women’s skirts in a supermarket, according to court documents. Police searched Pélicot’s house and electronic devices, and found thousands of photos and videos of men engaging in sexual acts with Gisèle Pélicot while she appears to lie unconscious on their bed.
With the recordings, police were able to track down a majority of the 72 suspects they were seeking.
Gisèle Pélicot and her husband of 50 years had three children. When they retired, the couple left the Paris region to move into a house in Mazan, a small town in Provence.
When police officers called her in for questioning in late 2020, she initially told them her husband was “a great guy,″ according to legal documents. They then showed her some photos. She left her husband and they are now divorced.
He faces 20 years in prison if convicted. Besides Pélicot, 50 other men, aged 26 to 74, are standing trial.
Bernadette Tessonière, a 69-year-old retiree who lives a half-hour drive from Avignon, where the trial is taking place, arrived outside the courthouse at 7:15 a.m. to make sure she would secure a seat in the closely watched case.
“How is it possible that in 50 years of communal life, one can live next to someone who hides his life so well? This is scary,” she said, while standing in a line outside the courthouse. “I don’t have much hope that what he did can be explained, but he is at least going to give some elements.”
FILE - Gisele Pelicot speaks to media as she leaves the Avignon court house, southern France, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly, File)
FILE - Gisele Pelicot, left, arrives in the Avignon court house, in Avignon, southern France, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly, File)
FILE - Gisele Pelicot, left, arrives in the Avignon court house, in Avignon, southern France, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly, File)
