In the days after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) arranged a call involving all of its eclectic membership. The 100 or so IOC members include a Mongolian banker, a Cape Verdean schoolteacher, a Fijian doctor, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and HRH Princess Anne, and they all jumped on a Zoom to discuss what to do about Russia.
The point was made by IOC president Thomas Bach that the invasion of another sovereign nation deserved strong sanctions, but his proposal to ban Russia from global sporting events was met with plenty of opposition. One south Asian member spoke up to ask why, if that was the IOC’s policy on war, Britain wasn’t banished for invading Iraq.
The tension in that meeting spoke to a wider geopolitical reality – that Europe’s fury at Russia’s invasion wasn’t, and still isn’t, replicated around the world. Over the past 12 months, Russia has begun a slow creep back into the sporting fold. The International Judo Federation announced full reinstatement last year, and Fifa president Gianni Infantino has made clear that football is heading in the same direction under his watch.
So it wasn’t a great surprise when Russia and its close ally Belarus were welcomed back ahead of this month’s Winter Paralympics in Milan Cortina. The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) is at the behest of its global membership, and many don’t share the same strength of feeling held in Europe. Six Russians and four Belarusians will take part in the parade of nations at Friday night’s opening ceremony in the most overt display since 2016, and the doping scandal, that Russia is back on the field of play.
Jarringly, there will be no Ukrainian flag at the parade. Ukraine are boycotting the ceremony, along with a crescent of European countries – Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, as well as the UK – within Russian arms’ reach. The main Estonian broadcaster has vowed not to show any Russian athletes competing.
Criticism across Europe has been loud and angry. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the “awful” move to reintegrate Russia, while his sports minister, Matvii Bidnyi, called the decision “outrageous”. The campaign group Global Athlete accused any sporting body that welcomes Russia back of being “enablers” of Putin’s war. Italian government officials are unhappy that their Games will be tainted.
The IPC explained its decision, saying there was no longer clear evidence that Russia is using sport to promote its war. That is an interesting view when Vladimir Putin has been using sport for the last two decades as a veil of legitimacy. During the 2008 Olympic Games, Russia invaded Georgia. During its own Winter Games in Sochi, Russia invaded Crimea. So much for the old “Olympic Truce”.
Russia continued to use sport as a tool for soft power, hosting the 2018 Fifa World Cup as if nothing had happened. The blowback to the doping scandal was arguably stronger than the reaction to much of Putin’s warmongering. Now Russia is back on the Olympic stage. Those five rings carry a weight of credibility, and Putin will no doubt interpret this return as an endorsement of Russia’s wider acceptance at the international table.
But then the Paralympics will not be the last to ease Russia back into the fold. While the IOC’s position remains firmer than its Paralympic cousin, forcing Russian athletes to compete under a neutral flag at the recent Winter Olympics, noises from the organisation’s president, Kirsty Coventry, hint that Russia may make a full-fledged return at the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
Coventry is attempting to move the Olympics away from its expanded role under predecessor Thomas Bach as a diplomatic entity and an arbiter of international geopolitics. Coventry, who won the presidency last year on an athlete-first manifesto, wants the IOC to revert to its primary mission of being an organiser of Olympic sport.
Her stance is partly a response to the increasingly complex state of the world. From the Middle East to Sudan to India and Pakistan, there is no mechanism for sporting bodies to decide appropriate sanctions for each and every conflict. The host of LA 2028 has just toppled and killed leaders in Venezuela and Iran respectively, on rocky legal grounds, and the IOC now might reasonably be asked by some of its members whether American athletes should be banned from their own Olympics.
Donald Trump is a looming challenge for the Olympic and Paralympic movements. An IOC source told The Independent that Coventry is quietly dreading her political dance with the US president in the run-up to LA. She is unlikely to take the same ego-stroking approach as Fifa president Infantino, who has been seen gurning in a Trump-issue red cap and handing over misjudged peace prizes. Tension is inevitable. That the Games will take place in California, a Democratic heartland, will only add to the political edge.
So the IOC may decide it is easier to include Russia than keep playing judge and jury. The problem, of course, is that politics can never be fully detangled from sport. During the Winter Olympics, Coventry pleaded with Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych to give up his war-protest helmet; she was moved to tears in her efforts, but he refused. More flashpoints will inevitably distract from the Paralympics over the next 10 days. Stories will overshadow the sport. For the first time in a decade, Russia is back at a major sporting event, and this is just the start.
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