Vladimir Putin gives up on the Friendship Games, a Russian project supposed to compete with the Olympics

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced this Monday, in a decree, that he would not organize his Friendship Games, which were supposed to compete with the Olympic Games and which were initially planned for this year. Relations between Moscow and world sporting bodies have been consumed for several years by a multitude of conflicts, between state doping scandal in Russia and verbal escalations, espousing geopolitical tensions. They have been polar with the IOC since the start of the invasion in Ukraine in February 2022.