Nov 3 (Reuters) – Canada will not let ice hockey players from Russia or Belarus take part in the world junior championships set to start next month in the province of Alberta, Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters on Tuesday.
Canada, a major international backer of Ukraine in its war with Russia, has already condemned a decision last week by the Court of Arbitration for Sport to allow Russians to compete in International Ice Hockey Federation events.
The world junior championships are due to run from late December to early January.
“While Russia and Belarus are supporting this illegal, unjustified, horrific war in Ukraine, as long as that’s going on, there will be none of those athletes competing for their countries in Canada,” he said.
“So, if you’re asking specifically about the world juniors, the Russians will not be there,” he told a televised press conference at the end of a summit in Antigua.
Earlier on Tuesday, national ice hockey federations in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and the Czech Republic said they would refuse to play Russia at next year’s men’s Ice Hockey World Championship in Germany.
Oleg Stepanov, the Russian ambassador to Canada, told the state news agency TASS that the decision was regrettable.
“It is regrettable that the Carney’s office is bringing politics even into junior hockey, which is meant to unite, not divide,” he said.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren and Jekaterīna Golubkova, editing by Maria Cheng, Christian Radnedge and Christian Schmollinger)
