Mark Carney says Russians will 'absolutely' be denied visas for 2027 world juniors
· Toronto Sun
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Prime Minister Mark Carney said that the Russian national team will not be allowed into Canada for the IIHF World Junior Championship being hosted in Alberta at the end of the year.
Carney’s statement came on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Summit in Antigua on Tuesday after an earlier appeal from Ukraine’s foreign minister to deny Russian athletes visas for the tournament to be hosted in Edmonton and Red Deer, Alta., starting on Dec. 26.
The comments from Andrii Sybiha called on the top hockey nations to “show that hockey still has values” after the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld an appeal from the Russian Ice Hockey Federation to allow its team to compete at the world juniors, the under-18 men’s and women’s world championships and the senior men’s and women’s worlds.
“Refuse to play against Russia and deny visas to its players,” Sybiha said in a social media post on Tuesday . “Keep Russia off the ice! A war of aggression and hockey are incompatible.”
Several European hockey federations, including Sweden, Finland, Latvia, and Czechia, had already stated their teams would not play Russia in international competition in the aftermath of the CAS decision announced on Friday .
When asked about the pushback on Tuesday, Carney said that Canada would “absolutely” deny visas to the Russian world junior team.
“To be clear, we respect the decisions of the Finns, the Czechs, the Swedes, those other nations, but this is a decision we take on our own,” Carney told a reporter in comments broadcast by CPAC. “Which is … while Russia and (Belarus) are supporting this illegal, unjustified and horrific war in Ukraine, as long as that’s going on, there will be none of those athletes competing for their countries in Canada.
“So if you’re asking specifically about the world juniors, the Russians will not be there.”