Olympics 2024 | Russian and Belarusian athletes broke rules on Ukraine war, rights group says

The Hague: Ten Russian and seven Belarusian athletes cleared to compete in the Paris Olympics have violated the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) rules on neutrality regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine and should be barred, an international rights group said on Thursday.

Global Rights Compliance, which tracks violations of international humanitarian law in the conflict and assists war crimes prosecutors in gathering evidence of alleged violations, said it had presented evidence to the IOC substantiating the assertions, but that the committee had ignored its warnings.

The athletes in question are among 15 Russians and 16 Belarusians who have been cleared by a review panel established by the IOC and have accepted invitations to compete in the Games, which run from July 26 to August 11, it said.

Global Rights Compliance called on the IOC to urgently reconsider the decision to clear the sportsmen and women and to "ban pro-war athletes according to its own rules and commitments to the United Nations Business and Human Rights Principles".

"These Olympic Games should be an opportunity for the IOC to affirm and demonstrate its respect for its own human rights policy," said Wayne Jordash, president of Global Rights Compliance.

He said the IOC was turning a blind eye to the involvement of Russian and Belarusian athletes who have shown support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

A spokesperson for the IOC said it could not comment on individual cases or on the decisions of the review panel, which had assessed the athletes according to the agreed guidelines. The IOC had nothing further to add, the spokesperson said.

The Russian and Belarusian Olympic Committees did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The IOC condemned Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for which Moscow used Belarus as a launching pad. The Olympic body has ruled the Russian and Belarusian athletes may compete in Paris only as neutrals, without their national flags or anthems.

The IOC also set up the review panel in order to screen out Russian and Belarusian athletes who had publicly supported the war or were contracted to military or national security agencies.

Global Rights Compliance said it had determined through open-source investigation that 10 Russians and seven Belarusians had been cleared to compete despite violating those criteria.

Among those it named were Russian cyclist Alena Ivanchenko, who it said had "liked" a number of pro-war posts on social media, including posts questioning Ukraine's right to exist or supporting Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian territories of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The report said Russian tennis player Elena Vesnina had liked posts about "military feats" of Russian soldiers killing Ukrainians, and posts displaying the Russian pro-war "Z" symbol.

Ivanchenko and Vesnina did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Russian canoeist Alexei Korovashkov was named in the report as a member of a sports institution with links to national security agencies.

Reuters separately established that he had published, and subsequently deleted, social media posts in 2023 and 2024 in which he used grossly offensive language towards Ukrainians, including in a chat whose name referred to the war.

When contacted by a Reuters journalist, Korovashkov did not respond to questions and blocked the reporter from sending further messages.

Global Rights Compliance said that since the Russian invasion in February 2022, more than 450 top Ukrainian athletes had been killed in the war.

In February, the Ukrainian Olympic Committee asked the IOC to investigate the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes following alleged breaches of neutrality.

Global Rights Compliance said it would alert IOC corporate partners including AB InBev, AirBnb, Allianz, Atos, Bridgestone Corporation, Coca-Cola, Deloitte, Intel, Omega, Panasonic, Samsung, Toyota Motor Corporation and Visa that they could be unknowingly complicit in endorsing Russia’s war.

AB InBev declined to comment, while Samsung and Visa had no immediate comment.