IOC again defends political neutrality, but Russia's return toward Los Angeles 2028 remains the most sensitive issue
The International Olympic Committee has once again placed the political neutrality of sport at the center of its public message, at a time when it is being watched increasingly closely whether Russia can obtain a broader path back toward the Olympic Games in Los Angeles 2028. IOC President Kirsty Coventry said at the organization's 146th Session in Lausanne that the Olympic movement wants to protect sport from political interference at all times, according to Inside the Games' report from the session. The IOC presents such a position as protection of athletes' rights to compete without collective punishment for the decisions of their governments. At the same time, the same formulation raises the question of whether the principle of neutrality can turn into a mechanism for Russia's gradual rehabilitation on the biggest sporting stage. As of June 25, 2026, it has not been officially confirmed that the Russian Olympic Committee will fully return for the 2028 Games, but the direction of the discussion shows that the decision is increasingly moving from a regime of extraordinary sanctions into a more complex debate about the limits of sporting autonomy.
Neutrality as a principle and as a political problem
In its official documents, the IOC has for years referred to the Olympic Charter, according to which sports organizations in the Olympic movement must apply political neutrality and preserve the autonomy of sport. In practice, this means that the IOC seeks to separate an individual athlete's right to compete from the behavior of the state whose passport he or she carries, especially when the athlete competes without a flag, anthem and state symbols. Coventry adopted that approach at the moment when she became the tenth IOC president and the first woman in that position, after being elected in March 2025 at the session in Costa Navarino, according to the IOC's official announcement. Her message on neutrality is therefore not only a general statement of values, but a signal about how the new leadership wants to resolve the most difficult geopolitical disputes in sport. Critics, especially from the Ukrainian sporting and political environment, warn that neutrality can become unequal if it treats the attacked country and the state whose invasion led to sanctions in the same way.
The debate is additionally sensitive because the IOC does not operate in an empty space. The Olympic Games have a global audience, large commercial contracts, political visibility and symbolic power that states often use to build prestige. For that reason, the claim that sport should be protected from politics is at the same time understandable and difficult to implement. According to the IOC, the goal is to prevent athletes from being used as a means of political pressure or propaganda, but every decision about Russian and Belarusian athletes necessarily produces political consequences. The central problem lies precisely in that tension: neutrality can protect individuals from collective responsibility, but it can also soften the consequences for systems that use sport as part of state power.
The Russian case is not the same as the Belarusian one
The most important change ahead of Los Angeles happened on May 7, 2026, when the IOC Executive Board announced that it no longer recommends restrictions on the participation of Belarusian athletes, including teams, in competitions under the authority of international federations and sports event organizers. According to that official announcement, the measures from 2022 and 2023 are no longer recommended for Belarus, which opens space for Belarusian athletes in the qualification cycle for Los Angeles to compete again with national identity, if individual federations accept it. At the same time, the IOC emphasized that Russia's situation differs from the Belarusian one. The Russian Olympic Committee remains suspended, and the reason is not only the war, but also the decision of the Russian committee to include sports organizations from occupied Ukrainian territories under its jurisdiction, which the IOC described as a violation of the Olympic Charter and of the territorial integrity of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine.
That distinction was also confirmed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, which in 2024 rejected the Russian Olympic Committee's appeal against the suspension, according to an Associated Press report. The court then accepted that the suspension had not violated the principles of legality, equality, predictability or proportionality. After the ruling, the IOC repeated that the Russian committee cannot receive funds or operate as a full national Olympic committee while the suspension lasts. Russian athletes, however, are not automatically excluded from all Olympic pathways: since 2023 they have been able, under strict conditions, to qualify and compete as individual neutral athletes. It is precisely this distinction between the institution and the individual that has enabled the IOC to claim that it is punishing a violation of Olympic rules, but not closing the door to every athlete with a Russian passport.
The model of individual neutral athletes
The system of individual neutral athletes, known as AIN, was introduced as a compromise after the initial recommendations to exclude Russian and Belarusian athletes following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. According to the official rules for Paris 2024, athletes with Russian or Belarusian passports had to meet the qualification standards in their sports, undergo additional vetting by international federations and the IOC, and compete without a state flag, anthem, colors or other national symbols. Team appearances were not allowed, and athletes who actively supported the war or were connected to the military and security services of Russia or Belarus could not obtain the status of neutral participants. The IOC retained the same framework for the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games, according to its announcement from September 2025.
Such a model was intended to show that sanctions are directed toward state representation, and not toward every individual. But its implementation opened a series of practical and moral questions. Checking public positions, contractual links, membership in sports clubs connected to the military and appearances at events that support the war is a complex procedure in which mistakes have serious consequences. Ukrainian sports institutions and human rights organizations have repeatedly warned that athletes connected to state structures or propaganda events can hide behind neutral status. According to reports by international media, Ukraine also in 2026 sought additional examination of the neutral status of certain Russian athletes, claiming that the criteria had not always been applied strictly enough.
Los Angeles 2028 as the next major turning point
The Olympic Games in Los Angeles will be held from July 14 to 30, 2028, according to the official announcement by the LA28 organizers, and qualification cycles for many sports begin well before the opening of the Games. That is why the IOC's decisions from 2026 are not merely administrative. They affect the rules under which international federations are already planning qualifications, quota allocation and athletes' appearances in competitions leading toward the Olympic program. If the existing framework is retained for Russia, Russian athletes could compete only as neutral individuals, without flag and anthem, with checks and without team disciplines. If the regime is eased, the question would open as to whether Russia can appear in Los Angeles with full national identity or at least with expanded rights compared with Paris and Milano Cortina.
Currently available official information does not confirm such a full return. On the contrary, in May 2026 the IOC explicitly separated the Belarusian and Russian cases, stating that the Russian Olympic Committee remains suspended, while additional issues connected with the anti-doping framework are also open for the Russian sporting system. That distinction is crucial for understanding Coventry's message: a call to protect sport from political interference does not automatically mean the removal of all sanctions. Still, the fact that neutrality is now being emphasized as a fundamental principle ahead of Los Angeles shows that the IOC is preparing an argumentative framework for future decisions. Whether that framework will be used to retain the individual neutral model or for a broader easing of restrictions remains open for now.
The role of international federations
Even when the IOC issues a recommendation, the final sporting reality depends on international federations. They run qualifications, determine technical rules and decide how they will apply Olympic guidelines in their disciplines. The example of Belarus shows that an IOC decision does not automatically have to mean a unified return in all sports. After the IOC recommended in May 2026 that restrictions on Belarusian athletes be lifted, some media reported that World Athletics was maintaining its own ban on athletes and officials from Russia and Belarus. This means that the path toward Los Angeles will probably remain uneven: in some sports the rules may be more lenient, in others significantly stricter.
This fragmentation is not new. After 2022, international federations reacted differently to IOC recommendations, depending on security circumstances, pressure from national associations, legal risks and their own statutes. Some allowed neutral appearances with vetting, some maintained bans, and some faced proceedings before the Court of Arbitration for Sport. For athletes, this creates uncertainty, because their Olympic path does not depend only on results, but also on rules that can change during the cycle. For the IOC, however, such a system means that political neutrality is not an unambiguous decision from Lausanne, but a negotiating framework that is translated into different practice in each sport.
The Ukrainian argument: neutrality is not enough without accountability
From the beginning, the Ukrainian side has warned that Russian and Belarusian appearances cannot be viewed only through the rights of individual athletes. According to Ukrainian sports institutions, sport in Russia is often connected with state structures, the military, security services and propaganda events, so a neutral label does not necessarily remove the political meaning of an appearance. Additional sensitivity is created by the fact that Ukrainian athletes are at the same time affected by the war, interruptions to training, loss of infrastructure, mobilization, displacement and the deaths of members of the sporting community. When they are asked to accept appearances by athletes from the aggressor state under a neutral flag, the debate is no longer only procedural, but also moral.
The IOC responds that the Olympic movement must adhere to a universal approach and that athletes must not be automatically excluded only because of their passport. According to official explanations, that is why criteria were introduced that exclude those who actively support the war or are connected to the military and security apparatus. But critics point out that the boundary between individual neutrality and state representation in authoritarian systems is particularly difficult to verify. If an athlete does not speak publicly, that does not have to mean that he or she is politically independent; if the athlete does speak, he or she can face consequences in his or her own country. Precisely for that reason, the credibility of any future solution will depend on the transparency of checks, clear criteria and the IOC's willingness to explain every change in policy.
What Russia's full return would mean
Russia's full return to the Olympic Games would mean much more than a change in accreditation labels. It would include the question of the flag, anthem, national colors, team sports, the presence of officials, a place in the official medal table and the rights of the Russian Olympic Committee in the Olympic system. While the Russian Olympic Committee is suspended, such a return is difficult to imagine without a formal resolution of the dispute that arose from the inclusion of sports structures from occupied Ukrainian territories. According to the Associated Press, that very action was the basis of the IOC's decision from October 2023 and later confirmation before CAS. In addition, according to reports on the May 2026 decision, the IOC also cited, in Russia's case, the need for a better understanding of the state of the anti-doping system.
That is why caution in wording is important. It can be said that political neutrality is again being strongly emphasized at the top of the Olympic movement, that the regime for Belarus is already being eased and that Russia's status is increasingly being discussed in the context of Los Angeles 2028. It cannot, however, be claimed that Russia's return has already been approved. For now, the only thing confirmed is that the IOC is keeping the door open for individual neutral athletes under conditions it determines itself, while the institutional status of the Russian Olympic Committee remains unresolved. In that space between principled neutrality and concrete sanctions, one of the most important sports-political debates ahead of the next Summer Olympic Games will be conducted.
Neutrality will have to prove its own consistency
Coventry's message that sport must be protected from political interference sounds like a continuation of long-standing Olympic doctrine, but the circumstances in which it is being spoken give it special weight. If the IOC wants to defend neutrality as a principle, it will have to show that it is not selective, that it does not serve only to calm the pressures of major sporting powers and that it does not ignore the consequences of the war for Ukrainian athletes. If it wants to protect the right of individuals to compete, it will have to convincingly prove that those individuals truly do not represent the state apparatus that led to sanctions. And if it wants to maintain authority before international federations, it will have to offer rules that are clear enough to be applied equally in different sports.
Los Angeles 2028 therefore becomes a test broader than the question of who may enter the stadium. It is a test of the credibility of Olympic neutrality at a time when sport, diplomacy, war, the market and public perception cannot easily be separated. The IOC can claim that it wants to protect sport from politics, but the decision on Russia will be read politically regardless of official terminology. Precisely for that reason, future steps will not be measurable only by the number of athletes with Russian passports who may eventually obtain the right to compete. They will also be measured by whether the Olympic movement manages to explain why a certain boundary was drawn exactly where it was.
Sources:
- International Olympic Committee – official announcement on the election of Kirsty Coventry as the tenth IOC president and the first woman in that position (link)
- International Olympic Committee – official announcement on political neutrality, the autonomy of sport and opposition to the politicization of sport (link)
- International Olympic Committee – official announcement on lifting recommended restrictions for Belarusian athletes and distinguishing the Belarusian and Russian cases (link)
- International Olympic Committee – official announcement on the conditions for individual neutral athletes at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 (link)
- International Olympic Committee – official announcement on the application of the same conditions for individual neutral athletes at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 (link)
- Associated Press – report on the CAS decision rejecting the Russian Olympic Committee's appeal against the IOC suspension (link)
- Euronews / AFP – report on lifting restrictions for Belarus, maintaining restrictions for Russia and the context of qualifications for Los Angeles 2028 (link)
- Inside the Games – report from the 146th IOC Session on the renewed emphasis on the political neutrality of sport under Kirsty Coventry's leadership (link)
- LA28 – official dates of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles 2028 (link)