The board of the International Ice Hockey Federation IIHF includes Russian hockey player Pavel Bure, a close friend of Vladimir Putin, writes BILD. According to observers of the publication, he may be behind the removal of the Israelis out of a sense of revenge for not allowing the Russian Federation to participate in competitions because of the war in Ukraine.
The head of the Israeli Olympic Committee, Yael Arad, has already said that she will challenge the IIHF decision, calling it a “stench of anti-Semitism.”
