Beautiful Virgin Islands

Monday, Oct 13, 2025

IOC details advice to let Russia, Belarus athletes return

IOC details advice to let Russia, Belarus athletes return

Some Russian athletes can soon return to international sports, although their status for next year’s Paris Olympics is still up in the air.
The International Olympic Committee recommended Tuesday that individual athletes from Russia and Belarus should be allowed to return to competition under a neutral status as long as they have no military links. But the IOC, facing increased pressure to ban Russia and Belarus from the Paris Olympics because of the war in Ukraine, held off on deciding whether they can compete at next year’s Summer Games.

That decision will be taken “at the appropriate time,” IOC President Thomas Bach said. When it comes to other events, including Olympic qualifiers, it will be up to each individual sport’s governing body to make the final decision on whether Russian and Belarusian athletes can take part.

While the IOC said Russia and Belarus should remain barred from team sports such as soccer and basketball, it still defied repeated calls by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to exclude all Russian athletes while his country is being occupied and attacked. But athletes from Russia and its military ally Belarus who have actively supported the war in Ukraine, or are “contracted to the military or national security agencies”, should not be cleared to compete as neutral individuals, Bach said.

The Russian Defense Ministry has said more than 20 of the country’s medalists at the Tokyo Olympics staged in 2021 held military ranks. Of the 71 medals won in Japan, 45 were by athletes affiliated with the Central Sports Club of the Army.

In team sports, Russia and Belarus “cannot be considered” for a return, Bach said at a news conference after what he said was a unanimous agreement among the 15-member executive board.

Team events in other sports, such as relays or mixed doubles or team all-around in gymnastics, should also be off limits, the IOC said in a document explaining its guidance.

“There is definitely discrimination in this,” veteran Russian gymnastics coach Valentina Rodionenko said in comments reported by RIA Novosti, adding that with “conditions like these, they understand very well that Russia itself will not agree to them.”

In the guidance document, the IOC said it would like Russians and Belarusians to be known as Individual Neutral Athletes with the French acronym AIN.

They should wear uniforms that are either entirely white or a single color, and can’t have a team logo. Athletes should be barred from displaying their national flags on social media or making statements “that may be prejudicial to the interests of the competition, its integrity or the participant’s neutrality,” the 5-page document stated.

The IOC’s recommendations “do not concern” the Paris Games that opens in 16 months’ time.

“The IOC will take this decision at the appropriate time at its full discretion,” said Bach, adding that “we are not kicking it down the road” when asked if the IOC was effectively buying time for the war to end.

The individual Olympic sports must now decide the entry and eligibility conditions for their events, which include ongoing qualifiers for the Paris Olympics and beyond to the 2026 Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo Winter Games.

Some Olympic sports, such as track and field and gymnastics, have established independent integrity units that earned wide respect. The position of some sports bodies which have strong sporting, commercial and political ties to Russia is less clear.

The suggested conditions are stricter than when Russia was under sanctions for doping cases at each Winter and Summer Games since 2018. In those events, uniforms in national colors could be worn and music by Tchaikovsky was played when Russian athletes won gold medals.

The IOC also said that event organizers should not fly Russian or Belarusian flags and should try to prevent spectators bringing national flags into venues.

Four fans with Russian flags, including one with an image of President Vladimir Putin, were evicted after they flew them at the Australian Open tennis event in January.

The IOC advice presented Tuesday marks a profound shift in sport’s position on Russia and Belarus following a near-total exclusion by most governing bodies.

Within days of the war starting in February last year, the IOC urged sports bodies to isolate Russia and Belarus. It cited an “extremely grave violation” of the Olympic Truce in place for the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, plus the integrity and security of sports events, including the unfairness that Russians could train in peace while Ukrainians athletes’ lives were disrupted.

In January, the IOC formally announced it would seek a “pathway for athletes’ participation in competition under strict conditions”, with a view to letting Russians and Belarusians try to qualify for the Paris Olympics.

Bach has repeatedly pointed to advice from independent UN-recognized human rights experts that excluding athletes based only on their passports would be discrimination.

On Tuesday, Bach said one factor that changed IOC thinking is some sports having already reintegrated neutral Russians and Belarusians, such as tennis and cycling. Soccer’s exclusion of Russian teams by FIFA and UEFA was upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne.

Zelensky has consistently called for all Russian athletes and teams to be excluded. His call is backed by some governments and Olympic bodies in Europe and elsewhere.

“A slap in the face of Ukrainian athletes,” the sports minister of Bach’s native Germany, Nancy Faeser, said Tuesday in reaction to the IOC announcement.

“Those who let the warmonger Russia use international competitions for its propaganda are damaging the Olympic idea of peace and international understanding.”

Russian Olympic Committee president Stanislav Pazdnyakov told the Tass agency the guidelines would block athletes from competing: “The decision is a farce, the basic principles of the Olympic Charter are being breached.”

Ukrainian athletes, including past and current Olympic medalists, have also publicly disagreed with the IOC’s stated “unifying mission” to bring the world together peacefully in sport.

The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, said there should be no Russian delegation at her city’s Olympics if the war in Ukraine continues.

Bach was once close to Putin ahead of the steroid-tainted 2014 Sochi Winter Games in the first year of his IOC leadership, and reminded reporters Tuesday that last year he withdrew an Olympic honor from the Russian president.

Asked if he had communicated recently with Putin, Bach replied: “A clear ‘no.’”
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Ex-Microsoft Engineer Confirms Famous Windows XP Key Was Leaked Corporate License, Not a Hack
China’s lesson for the US: it takes more than chips to win the AI race
Australia Faces Demographic Risk as Fertility Falls to Record Low
California County Reinstates Mask Mandate in Health Facilities as Respiratory Illness Risk Rises
Israel and Hamas Agree to First Phase of Trump-Brokered Gaza Truce, Hostages to Be Freed
French Political Turmoil Elevates Marine Le Pen as Rassemblement National Poised for Power
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
×