You're reading: Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry and Olympic delegation upset about Ukraine ‘annexation’

 Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry and Olympic delegation chief have filed formal complaints and requested that London Games organizers correct the biographical data of Russian Olympic athletes born in Ukraine.

More than 30
Russian Olympic athletes who were born outside Russia had their birthplaces
made to look like they were born in Russia or its federal subjects on the
official Olympic website.

Thus, Alexey
Korovashkov, who canoes for the Russian Federation, is listed as being born in
“Ukraine Region (RUS).” Other Ukraine-born athletes were listed being born
in “Lvov Region (RUS)”
or “Lutsk (RUS).”

The practice was extended to athletes born in other former Soviet
republics, to which Russia’s current foreign policy refers as its “sphere of
influence.”

David Ayrapetyan therefore
was born in “Baku
(RUS)” (the capital of Azerbaijan), Alexandr Ivanov hailed from “Rustavi (RUS)”
(actually in Georgia), while Tatiana Kosheleva came from “Belorussia Region
(RUS).”

“I have just charged the Ukrainian Embassy in Great Britain to get in
touch with the Olympic organizers to correct the [biographical] mistakes
[listed for the Russian athletes born in Ukraine],” tweeted Foreign Minister
Kostyantyn Gryshchenko on July 26.

According to Tim Potter, a
spokesperson for the London Games site, the National Olympic Committees are in
charge of providing biographical data. The Russian Olympic Committee did not
respond to a Kyiv Post emailed inquiry.

Separately, the head of Ukraine’s Olympic delegation in London, Nina Umanets
told the Kyiv Post over the phone that she let organizers know about the
mistakes and asked them to change the biographic data for Ukraine-born athletes
on the Russian Olympic team.

Umanets said she expects the organizers to fix the mistakes by the end
of the day.

The glaring
misclassification will
do nothing to lessen resentment among many Ukrainians over centuries of Russian
dominance, from czarist through Soviet times, before Ukraine gained its
independence in 1991. Criticism was swift.

“Last month, Russian
President Vladimir Putin urged his diplomats to apply ‘soft power’ tactics to
promote Russian interests abroad. This is an ongoing example of Russia’s
systematic soft-power attacks against Ukraine’s national and international
security,” said Walter Derzko, executive director of the Strategic
Foresight Institute in Toronto, Canada. “This time, it is on the official
Olympic website. Since when is Ukraine a region of Russia? This deserves a
strong reaction from the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the
leadership in the Ukrainian diaspora.”

The Georgian Olympic
Committee furthermore expressed
outrage and is demanding a correction from the London Olympic organizers. This
is not surprising, given that the website says Besik Kudukhov’s birthplace was
in South Ossetia (RUS).”

Georgia lost control over
the breakaway republic after a five-day war with Russia in 2008. Since then its
independence has been recognized by Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela and the island
nations of Nauru and Tuvalu (Solomon Islands refused), but never has there been
talk of annexation.

Lada L. Roslycky, an expert
on security with a focus on the Black Sea region, said Moscow is increasingly
using such soft power tactics in an effort to weaken, divide and geopolitically
conquer former Soviet republics that where once under its control.

Referring to Russia’s
alleged role in fueling separatism in Abkhazia and South Ossetia — the
breakaway regions in the Caucasus country of Georgia — she said: “I have
studied the manners in which the Russian Federation has been using soft power
tactics to promote separatism and gain geopolitical power. Without these
tactics Abkhazia and South Ossetia would not be in the situation they are in
now. Moreover, their operations continue to be used in regard to the Russian
Black Sea Fleet in Crimea.”

“The language law which was
recently [adopted by lawmakers in Ukraine to boost usage of Russian language] is another example of soft power war,” added Roslycky. “The recent move against
Ukraine and other post-Soviet states is a direct attack against their soft
power security.”

Some Ukrainian leaders have
displayed a track record of disdain for Ukraine’s sovereignty. The current
Education Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk has repeatedly shown contempt of
the “Little Russian” language and culture, a
derogatory reference to Ukraine.

Meanwhile,
Prime Minister Mykola Azarov was recently asked if he would pray with the
Russian president for the glory of the Russian world – an ideological concept
that has all Eastern Slavic or Russian-speaking regions subjugated to Moscow.
His answer: “I would gladly do so.”

Kyiv Post staff writers
Mark Rachkevych
and Jakub Parusinski can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].