News of the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship in Minsk and Riga

Opinion: Decision to move 2021 IIHF World Championship from Minsk is biased, politicized

MINSK, 18 January (BelTA) – It is a biased and politicized decision, Piotr Petrovsky, an expert with the Belarusian public association Belaya Rus, said as he commented on the decision to move the 2021 IIHF World Championship from Minsk.

“It was clear with the strongest pressure on the various sponsors of the championship beginning that certain forces put maximum pressure on the sports community and the International Ice Hockey Federation to prevent the World Championship from taking place in Belarus in 2021. As a result, we see a biased and politicized decision to deprive Belarus of the right to host the championship. In my opinion, this situation demonstrates a lack of respect for the sovereignty and independence of Belarus and for the contribution that the country has made to the development of ice hockey,” said Piotr Petrovsky.

The expert stressed that the radical opposition inside the country and those political migrants who lobbied for this decision now act in the face of Belarusian society “as traitors of national interests, sovereignty and independence of the country”. All have shown their faces in this situation. The Belarusian leadership fought for the championship to the end and did everything in its power: prepared the arena and infrastructure. Unfortunately, the International Ice Hockey Federation is not just unable to withstand the pressure, it has demonstrated its dependence on political issues, where not the issues of high-quality organization of sports events decide the fate of a championship but the narrow political desire of certain destructive forces that have nothing to do with sports,” he added.

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