Putin drops plan for 'Friendship Games' to rival Olympics

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday to shelve the planned hosting of the "Friendship Games", a big multi-sports event that the International Olympic Committee had condemned as a purely political project.

Russia announced last year that it planned to relaunch the competition first staged in 1984 as a Soviet-led alternative to the Los Angeles Olympics, which the USSR had boycotted in retaliation for a US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games.

The IOC said in March that the idea violated the Olympic Charter and urged countries not to take part.

Putin's decree, published on an official website, left open the possibility of staging the games at some point in the future pending a "special decision of the president".

Russia prides itself on its history of success at the Olympics but was barred from competing as a team at this year's Paris Games as punishment for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Only a small number of Russians were cleared to take part as "individual neutral athletes".