The teams from Russia and Belarus will not receive formal invitations to participate in next year’s Olympic Games in Paris because of the two countries’ aggression against Ukraine, the International Olympic Committee announced in a statement on Thursday.

The decision means that when invitations go out to more than 200 countries later this month, a year before the start of the Olympic games as per ritual, Russia and Belarus will not be included.

The IOC’s condemnation of Russia and Belarus’s participation in “the senseless war” in Ukraine was first issued in February 2022, soon after the full-scale ground invasion began.

The organization soon followed with this resolution:

“In order to protect the integrity of global sports competitions and for the safety of all the participants, the IOC EB recommends that International Sports Federations and sports event organisers not invite or allow the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials in international competitions.”

However, even though the two countries will not receive invitations to participate as teams, individual athletes holding passports from Russia or Belarus may not be banned from Paris next year.

“The IOC will take this decision at the appropriate time, at its full discretion, and without being bound by the results of previous Olympic qualification competitions,” the committee wrote Thursday on its website.

source npr.org

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