While the Olympic truce officially came into effect on July 19, at the time of the opening ceremony of the Games, it is clear that it is not a reality followed on the ground.
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The Olympic Games, the scene of a great diplomatic ballet. Paris welcomes more than 80 heads of state and government on Friday, July 26 for the kickoff of the Olympic Games. Emmanuel Macron will receive them at the Élysée Palace in the afternoon before going to the opening ceremony. These Games are intended to be a parenthesis of peace and fraternity in a world under tension. But the Olympic truce, which President Macron is calling for, is a sweet dream.
In ancient Greece, the Olympic truce was intended to protect the movement of participants and spectators. It was revived about thirty years ago. Since 1993, it has been adopted at each edition one year before the Winter and Summer Games by the UN General Assembly. Last year, the resolution was exceptionally put to the vote, at the request of Russia. Russia, which, along with Syria, abstained.
Emmanuel Macron, for his part, has continued to promote the Olympic truce, including to apply it to French political life. He has received significant support, including that of Chinese President Xi Jinping. But other leaders reject it. Like the Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky, who fears that it will “the enemy’s game”. But history proves him right.
Moscow has in fact broken the Olympic truce three times:In 2008, on the eve of the opening of the Beijing Olympics, the Georgian army repelled an offensive in South Ossetia against separatists supported by Russia. In 2014, in the middle of the Sochi Olympics, Russian forces occupied Crimea and in 2022, on the last day of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Russia invaded Ukraine and opened a conflict that is still ongoing.
In truth, the Olympic Games have never encouraged the silence of arms and in a world torn apart by conflicts, whether in the Middle East, Sudan, Ukraine or Burma, those in Paris will not change anything.