Russian President Vladimir Putin had developed a "blacklist" targeting Ukrainian athletes, Oksana Baiul, Ukraine's first figure skater to win gold at the 1994 Winter Olympics, told Newsmax.
"There is a blacklist obviously, circulating around Ukraine, and it's been created by Putin," Baiul told Tuesday's "Spicer & Co."
Baiul added, at the time of the Russo-Georgian War in 2008, some Georgians were also targeted on a blacklist.
Some of the biggest challenges the athletes face are "food" and the "cold," which is exacerbated by the Russians' bombing, Baiul told co-hosts Sean Spicer and Lyndsay Keith.
While as estimated two million people have fled Ukraine thus far, according to the New York Post, Russia might now face war crimes for shelling refugees and planting land mines along promised safe routes.
Possibly hundreds of thousands Ukrainian citizens are effectively being held "hostage" in cities with no safe exits, the Post reported Tuesday.
"Russia holds 300K civilians hostage in Mariupol, prevents humanitarian evacuation despite agreements," Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted Tuesday, which he later qualified could be as high as half a million.
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