Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions her Department has had with international sporting bodies to help ensure that no major events take place in Russia following that country's invasion of Ukraine.

The Government strongly condemns Russia’s recent actions. Russia must not be allowed to exploit major sporting and cultural events on the world stage to seek to legitimise its illegal invasion of Ukraine.

The international sporting community has a pivotal role to play in standing up to the illegitimacy of the Russian Government's actions. Our absolute objective is to ensure that international sporting events do not take place in Russia, and that Russian teams cannot compete internationally. The Government has been vocal on this issue and helped to ensure that sporting bodies, in this country and globally, have taken swift action.

In particular, my Rt Hon Friend, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and I convened a forum of national governing bodies on 28 February to support them in their response to this unprovoked attack, and strongly encourage engagement with their International Federations. The Government is also engaging with international ministerial counterparts this week to help build a collective approach on these issues. This dialogue and has already resulted in numerous sports bodies moving events away from Russia, and being clear that Russian and Belarussian athletes cannot participate internationally.

We applaud and strongly support the sports who have already taken many steps to respond to our calls for what is right.