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Duma member Vitaly Milonov didn’t mince words when asked four years ago about the international ban against Russian athletes.
“There’s no point in humiliating ourselves and begging to be let in,” said the St Petersburg deputy, 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 interview, just 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 on them – teams of vegans, queers and lesbians.”
Some Russian commentators have taken similar stances toward this year’s Milano Cortina Winter Games, asking why their athletes should even bother with the Olympics. The Paris Games were said to be a cesspool of un-Russian immorality – “the Olympics from hell,” one news site proclaimed. And with the national team still excluded, competition this year will be subpar. “The Olympics have lost their importance as a global competition,” Milonov said in January.
Disgruntled Duma members can badmouth the Olympics all they want. The fact is the world’s biggest sporting event is still significant for Moscow, not only as a showplace for its top athletes but also as a political tool. As far back as the 1950s, Soviet leaders saw the Olympics and world championships as a means of demonstrating their country’s superiority. Putin has had this same aim 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 has to give them gold medals.”
To get its national team back in the hunt for Olympic medals, Russia must clear two hurdles. First is the ongoing fallout from the doping scandal that broke in 2014. After investigations by the World Anti-Doping Agency revealed a massive, state-directed operation, the Moscow testing lab and the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) lost international certification. Russian athletes now submit their urine samples to Turkey.
The Russians haven’t been entirely aboveboard in their attempts to regain certification. After the Moscow lab reluctantly handed over digital testing records, Wada tech specialists found evidence of more than 20,000 deleted files. The cover-up led to sanctions imposed in 2020, requiring Russian athletes to compete at the Beijing and Tokyo Games under the flag of the Russian Olympic Committee rather than the Russian state.
In 2025, Russian anti-doping officials made their first appearance at the Wada conference in years, with Rusada chief Veronika Loginova declaring the agency had met requirements. The international body, however, states that Rusada is still not in compliance. Loginova is undeterred. She announced her readiness to take over as Wada’s next president.
The other hurdle 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 nations, led by the UK and including France, Italy, and the US (the hosts of the 2024, 2026 and 2028 Olympics) affirmed their opposition to Russian and Belarusian participation.
Moscow slammed the ban, saying it brought politics into sport. That charge stung the sportocrats in Switzerland, who hate nothing more than being branded as political. “If politics decides who can take part in a competition, then sport and athletes become tools of politics,” said IOC President Thomas Bach in March 2023, in response to the UK-led declaration. He offered sympathy to the people of Ukraine. “On the other hand,” he added, “we have, as a global organisation, a responsibility towards human rights and the Olympic Charter.” To Bach and the IOC, this responsibility meant opening a path for Russian and Belarusian athletes.
Prior to the Paris Games, the IOC established a procedure enabling individual Russians and Belarusians to compete. Prospective Olympians had to be clean from doping, have no military connections, and have no record of supporting the war. Once approved by a special review panel, Russians and Belarusians were able to participate as Individual Neutral Athletes (AINs). (AIN status could not be granted in team sports, as any group of athletes would represent their nation.)
In 2024, Moscow denounced the IOC’s concession as no concession at all. According to a sports official, Russian athletes were expected to “renounce their country’s flag and anthem, their national identity, their civil rights”. Nonetheless, Russia launched a legal barrage to get as many athletes as possible cleared for this year’s Milano Cortina Games. When the AIN review panel rejected the application of cross-country skier Aleksandr Bolshunov, a Russian attorney based in Switzerland appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Bolshunov had won three gold medals in Beijing, and he was a favorite to win more gold in Italy.
Bolshunov’s lawyer argued that his application had been arbitrarily rejected with no explanation. “The athlete has fully complied with all the requirements of the AIN Policy,” the skier’s attorney insisted. The appeal made no mention, however, of Bolshunov’s promotion from lieutenant to captain in the Russian national guard after winning in Beijing – “a true inspiration for military personnel”, the guard’s commander said. The appeal likewise didn’t address Bolshunov’s presence on stage at the March 2022 rally at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium in support of the invasion of Ukraine.
Bolshunov’s case illustrates the difficulties in bringing Russia back into international sport. The skier is by no means unusual in his military status. Most medals claimed by Russia at both Beijing and Tokyo were won by athletes affiliated with the military and security services. Similarly, Bolshunov is one of several Russian athletes who have expressed support for Putin and the war.
As Bolshunov’s appeal shows, governing bodies shouldn’t expect Moscow to admit any fault in the vague “politics” blocking its athletes, just as there has never been admission of the state-run doping program. Nevertheless, sports federations appear ready to let Russia back in the game. Fifa President Gianni Infantino declared last week that the ban “has not achieved anything.” The IOC wants Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in the 2026 Youth Olympics under their national flags. This past November, the head of the Russian Olympic Committee, Mikhail Degtyarev, stated the Milano Cortina Games will be the last Olympics in which Russians participate as neutrals.
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”. As for the athletes who are excluded, they are also proof of Russia’s sporting prowess. After all, it’s not only politics that keeps talents like Aleksandr Bolshunov out of the Games; there is also a conspiracy to prevent the world’s best athletes from rightfully taking gold. As figure skating coach Tatyana Tarasova said of the governing bodies: “They wanted to eliminate the competition.”
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Bruce Berglund is a historian, writer, and editor. His latest book, The Fastest Game in the World: Hockey & the Globalization of Sports, was published by the University of California Press in 2020.
