Lithuanian high school students, who participated in the European Robotics Championship in Italy over the weekend, refused to compete with a Russian team.
The strongest European teams were competing in Italy for the chance to go to the World Championships in Houston, US.
In total, four Lithuanian teams participated in the competition. However, two of them – Litbot and Lituanica X – did not qualify for the World Championships because they refused to compete in an alliance with the Russians against other teams. One of the Lithuanian team members was a Ukrainian, who fled to Lithuania after Russia started a large-scale invasion of his country.
When Lithuanians found out that Russians would be taking part in the competition, they wrote a protest asking for the teams from the aggressor country to be banned from the competition. The protest was rejected by the organisers.
The Lithuanian teams that were grouped with the Russians then refused to compete with them and raised Lithuanian and Ukrainian flags instead. Despite being among the competition leaders, they lost the crucial points due to this act and did not qualify for the World Championships.
“It is a situation where the minds and hearts of these young people have had to make decisions that adults are often unable to make themselves. And they made those decisions,” Justas Gavėnas wrote on Facebook.
“Many of them were probably trembling inside, perhaps heroically holding back tears. But these were the strongest minutes of their silence and resistance. The kind that many of our sports federations and the Olympic Committee cannot do,” he added.
Lituanica – Vilnius Lyceum Robotics, another Lithuanian team, which did not have to compete in the same group as the Russians, won a ticket to Houston.
Lithuanian people and politicians have expressed their pride in the act by the high school students, which took place against the backdrop of the day of restoration of Independence of Lithuania on March 11.
“Children of March 11. They have made their personal achievement less important than human honour and dignity,” Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė wrote on Facebook.
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