The 2024 Olympics will be in Paris Photo: Photosport
Up to 40 countries could boycott the next Olympic Games, making the whole event pointless, said Poland's sport and tourism minister Kamil Bortniczuk.
His comments came after Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia jointly rejected an International Olympic Committee (IOC) plan to allow Russians and Belarusians to compete in 2024.
Ukraine has threatened to boycott the Paris Olympics if that occurs.
But the IOC said any boycott would only "punish athletes".
Bortniczuk said he believed it would be possible to build a coalition of 40 countries, including Great Britain, the United States and Canada, to support a block on the International Olympic Committee's plans before a meeting on 10 February.
"Considering this I don't think we will face tough decisions before the Olympics and, if we were to boycott the Games, the coalition we will be a part of will be broad enough to make holding the Games pointless," he said.
The IOC announced last week that it would "explore a pathway" to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in Paris under a neutral flag, adding that "no athlete should be prevented from competing just because of their passport".
The move prompted condemnation, with the UK Government saying the plan was a "world away from the reality of war".
Ukraine sports minister Vadym Guttsait said the country's sporting bodies needed to "strengthen communication" with international federations to keep a ban in place on Russian and Belarusian athletes, which was imposed by the IOC's executive committee immediately after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
However, IOC president Thomas Bach has since said that was only intended as a "protective" measure towards those athletes, and now insists they should not be discriminated against.
Sports ministers from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland said "any effort by the International Olympic Committee to bring back Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete, even under a neutral flag, should be rejected".
"Efforts to return Russian and Belarusian athletes to international sports competitions under the veil of neutrality legitimize political decisions and widespread propaganda of these countries."
Photo: Handout image supplied by OIS/IOC. Olympic Information Services OIS.
And they called on "all international sports organisations and federations" to remove Russian and Belarusians athletes from international competitions until the war ends.
The IOC reiterated that no discussions on the return of Russian and Belarusian athletes to competition had yet taken place and warned Ukraine and other nations about the implications of threatening a boycott.
"A boycott is a violation of the Olympic charter, which obliges all NOCs to 'participate in the Games of the Olympiad by sending athletes'. As history has shown, previous boycotts did not achieve their political ends and served only to punish the athletes of the boycotting NOCs."
-Reuters
