KYIV — Ukrainian athletes will boycott the Opening Ceremonies of the Paralympic Games next month to protest a decision allowing Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete under their own flags and national anthems.
The controversy follows a standoff last week between Ukrainian officials and the International Olympic Committee. Vladyslav Heraskevych, a Ukrainian skeleton athlete, was barred from competing hours before his event at the Winter Games in Italy for refusing to remove a helmet honoring compatriots killed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Paralympic Committee said it was “outraged by the cynical decision” to allow six Russian and four Belarusian athletes to compete under their own flags in the Milan Cortina games, which open on March 6 in Verona.
The decision, which the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) announced on Tuesday, also allows national anthems to be played, if the athletes win a gold medal. The 10 athletes will take part in skiing events, officials said.
“It must be recognized that Russia, which is currently occupying Ukrainian territories and mass killing civilians — women, children, the elderly, and persons with disabilities — immediately raises its flag, soaked in the blood of Ukraine’s civilian population, over the territories it has seized,” the Ukrainian committee said in a statement posted on its Facebook page.
“It is precisely such a flag of a murderer state that the IPC leadership now allows to be raised at the Winter Paralympics,” the Ukrainian committee added.
Ukraine has said that its officials will also not attend the Paralympics and its flag will not be displayed at the Opening Ceremonies.
The decision will reinstate Russian national symbols at the Games for the first time since the 2014 Olympic Games. Olympic officials initially banned Russian athletes following a Russian state-sponsored doping program for its athletes.
This continued, and was extended to Belarus, after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, in which Belarus allowed its territory to be used by Russia’s military to enter Ukraine.
Since the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, the two countries’ athletes have been allowed to compete — but only as individuals, without national uniforms, displaying flags or playing their anthems during medal ceremonies
It is not known if Russian and Belarusian athletes will be allowed to participate at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, but some people, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, suggested the decision-makers could be moving in this direction.
Zelensky called the move to reinstate Russian and Belarusian athletes “dirty” and “awful.” He said that Russia was following a gradual process toward Olympic acceptance, in parallel with Moscow’s “creeping occupation” of Ukraine.
“A little bit of Crimea. No one responded? No one gave a kick? Okay. Donbas. No one answering? No one put sanctions? Okay. Full-scale invasion. Step by step, the Russian way of life,” Zelensky said in an interview with the journalist Piers Morgan, posted on X on Wednesday.
European leaders, including those of Olympics host country Italy, condemned the IPC decision.
“While Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine continues, I cannot support the reinstatement of national symbols, flags, anthems and uniforms, that are inseparable from that conflict,” Glenn Micallef, the European Commission’s representative for sports, posted on X.
Micallef said that allowing Russia and Belarus to return to the Games under a procedure that involved “fast-tracking their participation” was “unacceptable,” and the he, too, would boycott the Opening Ceremonies.
International sports is one of many areas that has experienced a spillover from Russia’s ongoing war.
Earlier this month, Gianni Infantino, president of the international soccer body FIFA, indicated that he favored lifting a ban on Russia, saying that the sanctions had “not achieved anything” and “created more frustration, and hatred.”
Ukrainian Sports Minister Matvii Bidnyi rejected Infantino’s remarks, calling them “irresponsible” and “infantile.”
Last week, war tensions intruded on the skeleton competition at the Winter Games. Heraskevych was removed from the starting list of his event after the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation ruled that his helmet — which displayed images of dead compatriots — violated the Olympic Charter and rules for athletic expression.
Olympic officials said that they tried to find a compromise. “We dearly wanted him to compete,” International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams said. “It would have sent a very powerful message.”
Nevertheless, Heraskevych said that, with the decision to allow Russian athletes to participate fully in the Paralympics, “the IOC has found a way to sink even lower.”
“Russian athletes did not even have to qualify for the Paralympics — they were simply granted licenses, which is usually impossible,” he said Thursday. “None of these athletes have taken part in international competitions over the past four years. They were just given quota places and are now competing under their own flags. It’s absurd. It’s a farce.”
Morgunov reported from Berlin.
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