The June 18 story reported “Russian track athletes banned from Games.” Reading the reporting from Nesha Stercevic made my hands tremble with emotions. How dare President Vladimir Putin say that Russia “does not accept ‘collective punishment.'”
On June 14, 1941, exactly 75 years ago, Joseph Stalin deported thousands of Baltic people to Siberia, deported innocent children and old people as “enemies of the people.” Very few survived to return and tell of the abuse, starvation and cold. What about that “collective punishment”?
There’s an interesting fact about the Russian athlete doping — they used a medication invented by a Latvian scientist to help his wife survive her damaged heart.
