Russian and Belarusian Olympic athletes accused of supporting war in Ukraine

A human rights law firm has accused the International Olympic Committee of negligence after releasing a dossier of 17 Russian and Belarusian athletes due to compete at Paris, who it said had shown support for the war in Ukraine in breach of Olympic rules.

Global Rights Compliance, based in London and Kyiv, said the athletes had either liked social media posts supporting the invasion of Ukraine, competed in pro-war competitions or were members of military-linked sports clubs.

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That was despite a special IOC vetting process introduced in December which bans athletes from either country from publicly “expressing support for the war in Ukraine” including on “social media – retweets, reposting etc” or at official venues, or being a member of military linked clubs.

Russia, historically one of the largest Olympic participants, and Belarus have been banned from sending official teams to Paris because of the invasion of Ukraine, which was launched by Moscow in 2022 with non-military support from Minsk. But in some sports, though not track and field because of a separate ban from World Athletics, individual competitors have been allowed to apply to compete as individual neutral athletes if they passed a special IOC test .

A team of investigators from Global Rights Compliance focused on the 15 Russians and 17 Belarusians deemed eligible and who accepted an IOC invitation to compete – and concluded there was evidence to suggest 17 were in breach of the rules.

They include road cyclist Alena Ivanchenko, 20, who, according to the law firm, liked an Instagram post from a pro-USSR account that featured an image of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin from March 2022, a month after the invasion, with the caption: “A truce with the enemy is possible only after its destruction!”

In another instance, the cyclist liked from her Instagram account a post from September 2022 in which Vladimir Putin announces a partial mobilisation of civilians to protect Russia and ensure the security of “liberated territories” in Ukraine.

A tennis player, Diana Shnaider, 20, liked two posts by Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of Russia Today, in the two days after the start of the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022, according to screen shots taken by the law firm. Each posting sought to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ivanchenko and Shnaider were approached for comment.

The most high-profile Russian planning to participate in Paris as a neutral athlete is the world’s fifth-ranked tennis player Daniil Medvedev. He is not named in the law firm’s dossier. Leading female Russian tennis player Daria Kasatkina, who is one of the few athletes from the country to publicly criticise the war, is not competing.

Zhan Beleniuk, a Ukrainian MP and wrestler who won gold in Tokyo in 2021 and who will compete again in Paris, said he was opposed to all Russians and Belarusians competing unless they actively denounced the invasion. He said that “over 450 Ukrainian athletes had been killed in the war” and accused Russia of “destroying the country’s sporting infrastructure” as part of the invasion.

Jeremy Pizzi, a legal adviser with Global Rights Compliance, said the IOC was “negligent, because it was not particularly hard to uncover this evidence” and accused the Olympics organisers of making statements about peace and human rights without taking action to support them.

“The IOC is more than happy to try to let these things blow over because the IOC is profiting from a system where it understands that it can claim to be pro human rights. It says athletes represent the values of peace, dignity, but then it does not actually put substantive work in to ensure the Olympic Games truly represents that,” Pizzi said.

The IOC said it could not comment on individual athletes and said that decisions on eligibility were made by the Individual Neutral Athlete Eligibility Review Panel, a three-strong body, set up in March and chaired by Nicole Hoevertsz.

A spokesperson for the Olympics organisers added that the panel “has reviewed the athletes in accordance with the IOC EB decision and the principles that were established” and that it had nothing further to add.