The European Gymnastics Federation is currently still proceeding with the 2020 European Championships despite the many obstacles on the way. The European Rhythmic Gymnastics Championships are scheduled for November in Kiev and both men’s and women’s European Artistic Gymnastics Championships are slated for December in Baku. The final decision regarding both competitions will be made at the end of September.
However, Rhythmic Euros are not in a good position at the moment. Earlier this week, Irina Deriugina and representatives of the Ukrainian Gymnastics Federation held a press conference trying to rally the media and the public to help them persuade the government to allow international gymnastics competitions. Local competitions have restarted in Ukraine with the National RG Championships and Kiev MAG and WAG championships taking place in August. However, the Deriugina Cup in rhythmic gymnastics and Ukraine International Cup in artistic gymnastics, both moved to September from their original dates in the spring, are both in jeopardy. Now that Ukraine closed the borders for foreign nationals until the end of September, both competitions might be canceled or only have local participants.
Yesterday, the definitive registration entries were published for the RG Euros and the biggest surprise was the absence of Russia from the list. Irina Viner, the head of the Russian Rhythmic Gymnastics Federation, explained that she does not believe the competition will happen and does not see it worth attending for the Russian team, since Russia already qualified to the Tokyo Olympics:
“First of all, it’s still not clear whether the competition will happen. Ukraine hopes it will happen, but the decision hasn’t been made yet. The UEG meeting will be at the end of September, that’s when the decision will be made whether the competition will happen or not. We can’t register for competitions that don’t exist.”
“Of course, at the moment, we can’t register because we need to pay for the hotel and this payment is non-refundable. The competition very likely won’t happen. I talked to many countries, they registered but don’t want to pay and won’t pay until the decision regarding the competition will be made.”
Another problem is the political situation. Russia and Ukraine have been at war since 2013 when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula. Before the annexations, there were multiple daily direct flights and trains between the two countries but those are gone now. Russian nationals are allowed to enter Ukraine (during the non-pandemic time, at least) but there have been multiple cases of denied entry. For example, entering Crimea from Russia is considered an illegal entry to Ukraine and grounds for deportation. Of course, Ukraine is unable to track every Russian citizen who vacationed in Crimea as they have no passport stamps confirming the fact, so the border control goes after more high-profile people like celebrities, politicians, or athletes. The Russian Rhythmic Gymnastics Federation is holding the Russian RG Cup in Crimea in September which will make all of its participants ineligible for the entry to Ukraine. Viner, however, did not mention this detail explaining her reasons for missing Euros and focused on the logistics instead:
“There are no direct flights [between Russia and Ukraine], there are no trains to Kiev, and you know that the relationship between our countries isn’t great. We just can’t afford to fly via some third countries and stay in isolation there. This is all [being decided] taking into account that the situation will change. But my opinion is that this competition is not worthwhile, we already qualified all the possible spots for the Olympics, nothing will change for us with the results of this competition. So, if this happened in a different situation, we would participate. We are ready, we’re training, everything’s fine. But because this all happened, we can’t risk our top gymnasts and our second and third teams either.”
