The Women’s World Boxing Championships will take place in New Delhi (India) from 15 to 26 March this year and the Men’s World Boxing Championships will be held in Tashkent (Uzbekistan) from  1 to 14 May.

The political opposition movement Erkin O’zbekiston urges you to boycott the 2023 Women’s and Men’s World Boxing Championships in New Delhi and Tashkent.

For a second decade now, Putin’s mafia regime has been using international sports organisations and events for criminal purposes, including money laundering, personal enrichment of sports officials, increasing the influence of Putin’s regime on other states, propaganda and further strengthening the authoritarian regime; legitimisation of criminal groups, etc.

Since December 2020, the IBA has been run by Umar Kremlev, a Russian citizen with a criminal record ( https://boxanalitika.ru/blog/kto-takoy-umar-kremlyev ), one of the individuals close to the Russian president. Kremlev’s proximity to Putin and the IBA’s funding from Gazprom make the international sports organisation a plaything in the hands of the bandit state.

As a propagandist for Putin’s regime and supporter of the revival of the allied Soviet state, Umar Kremlev facilitated a display a 40-metre portrait of Joseph Stalin in annexed Crimea and other Russian cities on Victory Day in 2020.

By unleashing a full-scale war with Ukraine in 2022, the Putin regime has made it abundantly clear to democratic states that from now on it will only talk to them from a position of strength. It is happening in the world of sports as well: the Putin regime has effectively taken the International Boxing Association hostage and is using sports to promote its aggression and propaganda.

The political opposition movement Erkin O’zbekiston calls on the international community to use all means to increase the isolation of the Putin regime. Let the boycott of the World Boxing Championship in 2023 be an important step in this direction.