The Olympics, War, and Political Neutrality

At the end of the month, July 2024, Paris will host one of the biggest stages in the world of sport: the 2024 Summer Olympic Games followed by the Paralympic Games, where individual athletes compete for both personal and national glory. The Olympics provide states with unique opportunities to reframe narratives about national identity and prosperity both at home and abroad and to win recognition at an international level. For states, the Olympics is about more than just fair athletic competition.

It is significant, then, that as a direct result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine over two years ago, the Paris games will have no displays of Russian or Belarusian nationality, despite the fact that there will be a limited number of Russian and Belarusian passport holders competing as “neutrals” under strict conditions. The decision to even allow some Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in Paris was at odds with what the Ukrainian government, as well as several other European governments (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland) and political parties (The EPP Group in the European Parliament), had lobbied for.¹ In early 2023, Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted a video on the social media platform X in response to discussions at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) over easing restrictions on Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in Paris. The video was introduced with Zelenskyy’s message:

“Against the backdrop of continued Russian aggression and devastating war crimes, the IOC is ‘exploring ways’ to permit Russian athletes to participate in the Paris Olympics. We urge partners to join our marathon of honesty, counter these efforts, and protect the Olympic Charter."

The video describes the effects of Russia’s invasion on Ukrainian athletes, accusing Russia of destroying over 343 sports facilities and killing 231 athletes.² Ukraine’s Sports Committee hosts a website, “Angels of Sport,” that tracks the number of killed athletes, which has increased to over four hundred. One of the more recent was Valentyn Dondikov, the coach of the Ukrainian paralympic shooting team, who was killed on April 6, 2024.³ Around the same time as Zelenskyy’s post, Marta Fedina, a Ukrainian synchronized swimmer, complained, “How can we even talk about the return of Russian and Belarusian athletes? It’s not fair … Our athletes have to train in harsh conditions, with generators—conditions unequal with the ones [they] have.”⁴

The Olympics and the Invasion of Ukraine

The Beijing Winter Olympics took place February 4 through 20, 2022. The day after the closing ceremonies, Russian President Vladmir Putin gave a speech in which he recognized the sovereignty of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic, which provided grounds for Russia to commence its invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Russia had delayed its invasion until the closing of the Winter Olympic Games—reportedly at the request of China⁵—but not before the Beijing Paralympic Games were to begin on March 4. In doing so, Russia not only committed an illegal act of interstate aggression but also broke the “Olympic Truce.” This refers to the period beginning seven days before the Olympics and lasting a week after the conclusion of the Paralympics in which states pledge “to use sport as a tool to promote peace, dialogue and reconciliation.”⁶

In response to the invasion—the very next day—on February 25 the IOC called on “all International Federations to relocate or cancel their sports events currently planned in Russia or Belarus,” and three days later, it “recommend[ed] no participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials.”⁷ Russian and Belarusian athletes were subsequently banned from competing at the Paralympic Games due to international pressure.⁸ While not specifically banned for violating the Olympic Truce, the IOC called Russia out for its timing as a violation of the Truce.⁹

Within the month, Russian teams and athletes were suspended from, among others, World Athletics, the International Basketball Federation, and the Special Olympics. The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) immediately banned the Russian national soccer teams and Russian clubs from all international competitions, and prohibited Belarus from hosting any UEFA matches.¹⁰ Even individual Russian and Belarusian athletes were prohibited from participating in individual sporting competitions, such as Wimbledon, despite several Russian and Belarusian nationals being ranked within the top 20, such as Daniil Medvedev, who won the 2021 U.S. Open, and Aryna Sabalenka, who had reached the Wimbledon semi-finals in 2021.

The fact that the international community, including the IOC, acted so quickly and strongly against Belarus and Russia was in some ways surprising. Since the end of World War II, countries have only been banned from the Olympics in rare cases. Japan and Germany were not invited to the 1948 Summer Olympics in the United Kingdom; South Africa was not invited and then subsequently banned from competing between 1962 and 1992; more recently, in 1992 Yugoslavia was banned from sending teams to the 1992 Summer and 1994 Winter Olympics, though its athletes were able to participate as “Independent Olympic Participants.”¹¹ In most other conflicts, calls to ban states from participating in international sports have been mostly absent, even in the case of the United States’ illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.

After its initial unequivocal response, however, in December 2023 the IOC’s Executive Committee ultimately issued guidance that allows some Russian and Belarusian passport holders to compete as individual neutral athletes but only if they meet several eligibility requirements. Aside from needing to meet the qualification standards—which was difficult because many of these athletes had already been banned from qualifying competitions—the athletes would only be able to participate in individual, not team, competitions. They will not be allowed to display any “flag, anthem, colours, or any other identifications whatsoever of Russia or Belarus…in any official venue or any official function."¹²

Further, the IOC also implemented several disqualifying criteria, specifically on the political activity of athletes relating to the conflict, as well as military service. First, “Athletes who actively support the war will not be eligible to be entered or to compete.” Second, “Athletes who are contracted to the Russian or Belarusian military or national security agencies will not be eligible to be entered or to compete.”¹³ As of July 13, 2024, only fourteen Russian nationals and sixteen Belarusian nationals have been invited and accepted the invitation, though this number may still rise.¹⁴

The Case for Banning National Teams: Violating the Olympic Charter

The moral questions that arise in this situation are twofold: First, at the national level, should Russian and Belarusian teams be permitted to participate in the Olympics? And second, even if the teams are not permitted to participate, should individual citizens of these states be able to compete as “neutrals” under the Olympic flag, as Russian and Belarusian athletes are permitted to this July? I will begin with the first question.

That Russia, as a team, should be banned from the Olympics because of its actions in Ukraine could be justified on several fronts, including the following: (a) Russia simply deserves the ban because it violated the Olympic Charter (or its actions are in some fundamental sense anti-sporting); and (b) a ban on Russian participation could have some practical effect on the conflict or on the political administration in Russia by removing some sports-related benefit that its participation confers.

The first of those arguments—that Russia should be suspended for violating the Olympic Charter—is perhaps the most straightforward, particularly in a legal sense. In proceedings before the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the IOC successfully defended its suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) because it violated a particular point of the Charter. Immediately after Russia’s invasion, the ROC incorporated several Ukrainian regional sports organizations into the ROC—such as the Olympic Councils of The Donetsk People’s Republic, Zaporzhye, and Lugansk. In response, the IOC suspended the ROC on the grounds that it “violate[d] the territorial integrity of the [national Olympic Committee] of Ukraine, as recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in accordance with the Olympic Charter.”¹⁵

In a press release, the European People’s Party (EPP Group), a 176-member center-right political party in the European Parliament made a different sort of charter-based argument. The EPP Group argued that Russia deserves to have its team banned because its government violated the “spirit” of the Olympic Charter, which proclaims that the Olympics should contribute toward a “peaceful better world” through sport.¹⁶

This includes the aforementioned “Olympic Truce,” which Russia so brazenly flouted in 2022. In its statement, the EPP Group also argued that Russia’s state sponsored doping program has shown that it treats sport as primarily a political tool, and went further, arguing that not only the state teams but the individual athletes should be banned: “It's not by allowing the aggressor states' athletes to participate in the Olympics that the IOC fulfils its maxim. [….] It's more of a slap in the face of the victims of aggression.”

The idea that “sport is a political tool” is certainly not a unique argument, especially as the phenomenon of “sportswashing”¹⁷ continues to be employed by states to bolster their images abroad. However, just how effective this tool really is is open to debate, and it is also unclear just how much individual sporting success benefits the state. Nonetheless, it is clear that the Russian government did violate the Olympic Truce, the peaceful vision of the Olympics, as well as the provisions of territorial integrity in the Olympic Charter, and that the Russian government organizes the ROC. Therefore, a good case can be made that the Russian team—and Belarusian team because of its actions in concert with Russia—should be banned as a natural consequence of the Russian government’s actions.

The Case for Banning National Teams: Sports Conferring Benefits and Status

A second reason to ban Russian participation is that its participation—or ban—could have some practical effect on the conflict or on the political administration in Russia. The All-England Club offered a version of this argument when it announced its ban of Russian and Belarusian athletes from Wimbledon in 2022. It announced that, “it is our responsibility to play our part in the widespread efforts of Government, industry, sporting and creative institutions to limit Russia’s global influence through the strongest means possible.” Their statement goes on to note, that “it would be unacceptable for the Russian regime to derive any benefits from the involvement of Russian or Belarusian players with The Championships.”¹⁸

Implicit in this argument is the claim that there is some benefit conferred to a state when its teams or athletes compete (and win) on the highest stage, and so not allowing a state to participate would have some high cost or remove some tangible benefit. If this is true in the case of an individual sport (tennis) where players are more likely to be known by name than by nationality, so much more must these benefits accrue in the case of the Olympics, where nationality is front and center. Since the Russian government is waging an illegal war in Ukraine and its athletic successes would—or could—confer positive benefits on the regime as it prosecutes this war, there is a strong case to be made that Russia should not be allowed to compete in the Olympics.

One of the key questions here is what kind of benefit a government really receives in cases of athletic success. Jake Wojtowicz, exploring this argument in relation to Russian participation in international football and in Europa/Champions League competitions, argued that the Russian nation should not be represented in international competitions because national competitions are ultimately about athletes winning to secure “glory for the nation.”¹⁹ What exactly “glory for the nation” means is up for debate, but it is certainly true that Russia—and before that the Soviet Union—has historically placed a high emphasis on sport as a perceived means to a political end.²⁰ The nature of this argument, then, presupposes several causal claims about the relationship of sporting success or failure—status or glory—to a state’s domestic and/or international standing. Just how effective these successes are domestically is questionable,²¹ but, as I note below, the Russian military and government invests a lot of money and resources into securing Olympic success, thus acting as though they believe that competing and winning confers some benefit. While questions of individual rights may still arise in the case of national bans, as I discuss below, there are strong consequentialist reasons to act to end the suffering of this war, as Wojtowicz concludes, by denying a government those status benefits it attempts to secure.

Moral Evaluations: The Military-Sport Complex

While Charter-based arguments are clearer than the status benefit argument, there is a further argument to be made based on the nature of the Russian military-sports nexus. In particular, Russia seems to treat its Olympic athletes as an arm of the government, if not the military, and so there is something particularly pernicious about the presence of Russian soldiers competing at the Olympics.

In the 2023 Zelenskyy X post referred to earlier, the video notes that at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, held in 2021, forty-five out of the seventy-one Russian gold medalists were affiliated with the military.²²

The investigative news source Polygraph found over 86 percent of Russian medalists in Tokyo had military affiliations.²³ According to the Russian Defense Ministry, more than twenty medalists in Tokyo were active-ranked military personnel,²⁴ and of the 335 athletes who competed, fifty were active Russian military personnel. Beyond those who are actively enlisted, 109 of the Russian Olympians belonged to the Central Sports Club of the Army (CSKA Moscow), which is part of the Russian Ministry of Defense.²⁵ For those athletes who do well, success comes with direct service benefits. According to the investigative journalism project Slidstvo.Info, “athletes receive better rank, hence pay, for winning in the Olympics."²⁶

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, the Russian government and military have relied upon athletes to support their propaganda campaign. At least one Russian publication, the newspaper Vedomosti, “argued that the Russian government wants to use athletic achievements to keep Russians happy and united when things are not going well elsewhere. ‘We need victories as a way of doping patriotism,’ it said. ‘Victories are part of state policy.’”²⁷ Indeed, in the early days of the conflict, in March 2022, several Russian Olympians, including swimming gold-medalist Evgeny Rylov, attended a pro-war demonstration with President Putin. The athletes wore their Olympic medals and jackets with the pro-war symbol “Z” on them.²⁸ For his actions, Rylov was subsequently suspended for nine-months by the global swimming body World Aquatics.²⁹ This was not a one-off propaganda event either. On December 2, 2023, the CSKA hockey team wore uniforms with the “Z” on it.³⁰

To be fair, many states use sport to promote military service and patriotism. The U.S. military supports athletes through its “World Class Athlete Program,” and in 2015 U.S. Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake released a report showing that the U.S. Department of Defense was paying sports teams to “honor” military service.³¹Nonetheless, there is a much weaker connection between sports and the military in the United States. For comparison, the United States’s Olympic delegation to Tokyo was 613, of which only 19 were actively enlisted.³²

As a result of the military-sports relationship in Russia, the IOC’s decision to ban Russia from competing as a team is reasonable because of the illegal invasion and the continued war crimes the Russian military is perpetrating in Ukraine. It is also reasonable to prevent those directly affiliated with the Russian military from competing in Paris, given the soldier-athletes’ presence at an event devoted to a “peaceful better world.”

Banning Individual Athletes: Discrimination and Human Rights

Setting aside for a moment the robust arguments for banning the Russian and Belarusian teams, the idea that all individual athletes from these countries should be barred from participating based on the actions of their home state relies on several claims that are harder to justify.³³ This idea requires either a theory of collective responsibility and punishment or some consequentialist justification that banning all individual athletes from competing outright is an effective, or even necessary, means of achieving a particular end (even when athletes are competing as “neutrals”).

To begin, it cannot be assumed that all Russian athletes support the war in Ukraine or contribute to it (unless they are in the military, for instance). Further, since the war began in 2022, Russia has passed several laws that prohibit opposition to the conflict. Conscripts who refuse to fight can face up to ten years in prison. Even conscientious objectors are liable to up to three years.³⁴ Critics of the war within the public sphere also face stiff penalties, with fines of up to $4,000 or five years in prison, with higher penalties going to offenses that are “deemed to have led to grave consequences”—up to seven years in prison and up to a $13,300 fine.³⁵ While some heroic individuals have demonstrated or spoken out against the war, the costs of acting or speaking out mean that silence on the subject cannot be taken for consent or approval of the war.

Typically, we hold individuals morally responsible for their behavior in cases where they are not being compelled to act in a particular way; there are alternative options available to them; and they are sufficiently informed about the options open to them and the consequences.³⁶

In the case of these criteria, Russian athletes are unlikely to be “free” in any meaningful sense, having neither meaningful alternatives to supporting the war (at least publicly), nor access to complete and true information about the war itself. Many Russian soldiers have also been forcibly conscripted, so their participation in the war itself is highly coerced. While the Russian government and the Russian military leadership are morally and legally responsible for the war in Ukraine, attributing this responsibility to individuals, as well as justifying any collective punishment toward these individuals, is a much higher hurdle to overcome.

A further mark against collective punishment comes from the fact that in some cases allowing Russians to participate in sporting events has provided space for dissent, showing that some high-profile Russian athletes do oppose the war. On February 25, 2022, top-10 ranked Russian tennis player Andrey Rublev wrote “No War” on the lens of a broadcast camera after a match, and then, at the ATP Finals tennis tournament in November 2022, he wrote “Peace Peace Peace All We Need” on another camera lens.³⁷ Nikita Zadorov, an NHL player, has also spoken out publicly against the war.³⁸ And so, the idea that Russian athletic participation itself inherently adds support to the war is a less secure claim than it may initially seem.

Beyond these questions of collective responsibility, one of the IOC’s justifications for permitting some Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete as neutrals came from concerns raised by the Special Rapporteur in the field of Cultural Rights, Alexandra Xanthaki, and Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, E. Tendayi Achiume.³⁹

Xanthaki and Achiume argued that several human rights related to non-discrimination and equality may be violated because of a blanket ban on Olympic participation, in addition to the right to participate in cultural life. As they note, the Olympic Charter itself specifies “The practice of sport is a human right,” and sport falls under the human right to cultural life.⁴⁰

Beyond this, singling out nationals of these countries for exclusion itself may be discriminatory and does not follow the “least restrictive measure” requirement for justifying restrictions on human rights.⁴¹

Further, in the case of military and sports development, one argument against excluding soldiers is that in Russia there are limited options to participate in certain sports without going through something like the CSKA Moscow. While in some sports, such as tennis, athletes have other avenues for development, for those with smaller financial pots, such as fencing or archery, this may be the only way a promising young athlete can develop. As Xanthaki and Achiume also pointed out, there are concerns about forced conscription in Russia, and so a blanket ban on all athletes with military affiliations itself may be problematic, though they note that career military personnel are less likely to be conscripted. In the end, what Xanthaki and Achiume argued for was a slightly less restrictive ban than the one that went in place, one that allowed for individual determinations on eligibility and the possibility to contest the decision as a way for even military-affiliates to participate as neutrals. Still, I would argue that given the difficulty of identifying just how coerced any given soldier-athlete really is, a general rule against those affiliated with the military is justifiable.

Conclusion: Double Standards/Consistency

This essay has argued that while the IOC has strong grounds for its ban of the Russian and Belarusian country teams, the case for banning individual athletes is much weaker. In this regard, the IOC would seem to be acting in a prudent and morally sound manner. Nevertheless, while a ban of the ROC, Russian, and Belarusian flags at the Olympics does send a signal of legal and moral approbation regarding the invasion of Ukraine, by taking this action the IOC has placed itself in a difficult position for how to respond to other injustices in the world. In the IOC’s explanation for their decision to allow Russian athletes to compete as neutrals, they note that there are over seventy active conflicts worldwide, and they provide this as a reason to not ban outright all Russian and Belarusian athletes. The IOC is thus now in a position where it has strong precedent for removing a belligerent state, but with this precedent comes an expectation to act as an arbiter in political disputes, risking further politicization of the Olympics.

While Russia and Belarus have been singled out over their actions in Ukraine, Russia has received weapons and support from North Korea, Iran, and China.⁴²As of today, there are outstanding arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for the heads of Israeli and Hamas leadership, and reports suggest more could be coming for Israel, given its decade-long attempt to obstruct investigations into its treatment of Palestinians. This is only a fraction of the variety of conflicts and injustice being perpetrated worldwide. If the IOC is not willing to implement further bans, is it ultimately acting fairly and consistently? In the future, the IOC will ultimately have to balance questions of fairness to the athletes, the discriminatory implications to citizens of those countries who are banned or stigmatized, consequentialist decisions about whether these bans ultimately do anything or are largely symbolic, and finally, whether there remains anything valuable or desirable about the apolitical myth of the Olympics. The Olympics are supposed to exhibit the principles of Olympism, the goals of which are promoting peace and development (Principle 2), remaining politically neutral (Principle 5), and committing to nondiscrimination (Principle 6). It remains to be seen whether the IOC can continue to square such noble goals in a world where politics, and the growing expectation to respond publicly to injustices, continues to seep into every domain.

—Drew Thompson

Drew Thompson is an editorial fellow at Ethics & International Affairs, the journal of the Carnegie Council. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Loyola University Chicago.