Duma member Vitaly Milonov did not mince his words when asked about the international ban on Russian athletes four years ago.
“There is no point in humiliating ourselves and begging to be let in,” said the delegate from St. Petersburg, a member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party. “We have our pride.” International events had been corrupted by the United States, he claimed in a 2022 interviewjust weeks after the International Olympic Committee and other governing bodies imposed the ban. “Only Russia can say no. Other countries will accept whatever nonsense the Americans force upon them – teams of vegans, gays and lesbians.”
Some Russian commentators have taken similar positions regarding this year’s Winter Games in Milan Cortina, questioning why their athletes should bother with the Olympics at all. The Paris Games were said to be a cesspool of un-Russian immorality – ‘the Olympic Games from hell’. one news site proclaimed. And with the national team still ruled out, the competition will be sub-par this year. “The Olympic Games have lost their importance as a global competition,” Milonov said said in January.
Disgruntled Duma members can do as much harm to the Olympics as they want. The fact is that the largest sporting event in the world is still of great significance to Moscow, not only as a showplace for its top athletes, but also as a political instrument. As early as the 1950s, Soviet leaders saw the Olympic Games and world championships as a way to demonstrate their country’s superiority. Putin has pursued this same goal throughout his decades in power, especially as his government has struggled to maintain infrastructure, public health and education. As political scientist Nina Kramareva explained to me: “Russia has nothing concrete to offer its own people. It must give them gold medals.”
To get its national team back into the hunt for Olympic medals, Russia must overcome two hurdles. First, there are the lingering consequences of the doping scandal that broke out in 2014. After investigations by the World Anti-Doping Agency revealed a large-scale state-run operation, the Moscow testing laboratory and the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) lost their international certification. Russian athletes now send their urine samples to Turkey.
The Russians have not been completely honest in their attempts to regain certification. After the Moscow laboratory reluctantly handed over the digital test data, Wada’s technical specialists handed it over evidence found of more than 20,000 deleted files. The cover-up led to sanctions imposed in 2020, forcing Russian athletes to compete in the Beijing and Tokyo Games under the banner of the Russian Olympic Committee rather than the Russian state.
In 2025, Russian anti-doping officials appeared at the Wada conference for the first time in years, with Rusada chief Veronika Loginova declaring the agency had met the requirements. However, the international body states that Rusada is still not in compliance. Loginova is not deterred. She announced her readiness to take over as the next president of Wada.
The other obstacle to Russia’s Olympic return is, of course, the war in Ukraine. Within weeks of the February 2022 invasion, the IOC and other governing bodies banned Russian and Belarusian athletes from international competition. The following year, more than 30 countries, led by Britain and including France, Italy and the US (the host of the 2024, 2026 and 2028 Olympics) confirmed their opposition for Russian and Belarusian participation.
Moscow denounced the ban, saying it brought politics into the sport. That accusation has stung the sportocrats in Switzerland, who want nothing more than to be labeled as political. “When politics decides who can participate in a competition, sports and athletes become instruments of politics.” said IOC President Thomas Bach in March 2023, in response to the UK-led statement. He expressed his condolences to the Ukrainian people. “On the other hand,” he added, “we as a global organization have a responsibility towards human rights and the Olympic Charter.” For Bach and the IOC, this responsibility meant opening a path for Russian and Belarusian athletes.
Ahead of the Paris Games, the IOC established a procedure allowing individual Russians and Belarusians to compete. Future Olympians had to be free of doping, have no military connections and no record of supporting the war. After approval by a special review panel, Russians and Belarusians could participate as individual neutral athletes (AINs). (AIN status could not be awarded in team sports, as each group of athletes would represent their country.)
In 2024, Moscow denounced the IOC concession as no concession at all. According to a sports official, they are Russian athletes was expected “renounce their country’s flag and anthem, their national identity, their civil rights.” Nevertheless, Russia launched a legal barrage to free as many athletes as possible for this year’s Milano Cortina Games. When the AIN assessment panel rejected cross-country skier Aleksandr Bolshunov’s application, a Russian lawyer from Switzerland appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Bolshunov had won three gold medals in Beijing and was a favorite to win more gold in Italy.
Bolshunov’s lawyer argued that his application had been rejected arbitrarily and without explanation. “The athlete has fully complied with all requirements of the AIN policy,” the skier’s attorney said insisted. However, the call made no mention of Bolshunov’s promotion from lieutenant to captain in the Russian National Guard after his victory in Beijing – “a true inspiration for military personnel,” said the guard commander. The appeal also did not address Bolshunov’s presence on stage during the March 2022 rally at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium in support of the invasion of Ukraine.
Bolshunov’s case illustrates the difficulties of bringing Russia back into international sport. The skier is certainly not unusual in his military status. Most of the medals Russia claimed in both Beijing and Tokyo were won by athletes associated with the military and security services. Likewise, Bolshunov is one of them several Russian athletes who have expressed their support for Putin and the war.
As Bolshunov’s call shows, governing bodies should not expect Moscow to admit any fault in the vague “politics” blocking its athletes, just as there has never been any recognition of the state-run doping program. Nevertheless, sports federations appear willing to let Russia back into the game. FIFA president Gianni Infantino declared last week that the ban “has achieved nothing.” The IOC wants Russian and Belarusian athletes to do that participate in the 2026 Youth Olympic Games under their national flags. Last November, the head of the Russian Olympic Committee, Mikhail Degtyarev, said declared that the Milano Cortina Games will be the last Olympic Games in which Russians participate as neutral parties.
In the meantime, officials and former Olympians are calling on Russians to support their individual neutral athletes. Sports media have dubbed the 13 AINs the “Russian team”. The athletes excluded are also a testament to Russia’s sporting prowess. After all, it is not just politics that is keeping talents like Aleksandr Bolshunov out of the Games; there is also a conspiracy to prevent the best athletes in the world from rightfully taking gold. As figure skating coach Tatyana Tarasova said of the governing bodies: “They wanted to eliminate the competition.”
Bruce Berglund is a historian, writer and editor. His latest book, The Fastest Game in the World: Hockey & the Globalization of Sports, was published in 2020 by the University of California Press.
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