IOC suspends Russian Olympic Committee

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced Thursday that it has suspended the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) due to Moscow’s illegal efforts to absorb parts of Ukraine.

In a news release Thursday, the committee said that ROC breached the Olympic charter by incorporating four regional sports governing bodies in eastern Ukraine as members of its committee. 

“The unilateral decision … constitutes a breach of the Olympic Charter because it violates the territorial integrity of the NOC of Ukraine, as recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in accordance with the Olympic Charter,” the IOC said in its news release. 

The four regional sports governing bodies in question are in the Russian occupied Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia. 

Russia illegally annexed the front-line territories early in its invasion, and they have remained among the fiercest battlegrounds throughout the war.

The IOC’s executive board has previously recommended that Russian and Belarusian athletes be barred from competing in world sporting events due to the invasion. The IOC announced in July that Russia and Belarus will not receive formal invitations to the 2024 Paris Olympics.

However, individual athletes with Russian or Belarusian passports can still compete as “individual neutral athletes” as long as they don’t publicly support the war. Teams from the countries are banned from competitions.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on the IOC to ban Russian athletes entirely. “The Olympic movement and terrorist states definitely should not cross paths,” he said in January.

The IOC noted that the vetting process for different sports will continue despite handing down its punishment on the ROC. 

“The suspension of the national Olympic committee doesn’t affect in any way the participation of independent athletes,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said at a news conference. 

The Associated Press contributed.