Some Russians have dismissed the Games over the continued exclusion of their athletes. But the truth is international sport is still important to Moscow<\/p>\n
Duma member Vitaly Milonov didn\u2019t mince words when asked four years ago about the international ban against Russian athletes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no point in humiliating ourselves and begging to be let in,\u201d said the St Petersburg deputy, a member of Vladimir Putin\u2019s United Russia party. \u201cWe have our pride.\u201d International events had been corrupted by the United States, he claimed in a 2022 interview<\/a>, just weeks after the International Olympic Committee and other governing bodies imposed the ban<\/a>. \u201cOnly Russia can say no. Other countries will accept whatever nonsense the Americans force on them \u2013 teams of vegans, queers and lesbians.\u201d<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some Russians have dismissed the Games over the continued exclusion of their athletes. But the truth is international sport is still important to Moscow Duma member Vitaly Milonov didn\u2019t mince words when asked four years ago about the international ban against Russian athletes. \u201cThere\u2019s no point in humiliating ourselves and begging to be let in,\u201d … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}