Rewarding war crimes: UWC demands the IOC reverse its decision to return russia to the Olympic Games

July 7, 2026

The Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) condemns in the strongest terms the International Olympic Committee’s decision to readmit russia and belarus to Olympic competition. This is not a sporting matter. It is a moral one, and the IOC has failed it. This decision is an insult not only to Ukraine, but to humanity itself.

russia is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. The vast majority of United Nations member states have condemned its aggression. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for its leadership. Every day, russian missiles and drones destroy residential buildings, schools, and hospitals. russian forces kill civilians and abduct children. These are well-documented atrocities.

While this destruction continues, the IOC has chosen to reward the state committing it. Athletes produced and funded by the same regime that wages this war will now cynically compete alongside the very people that regime seeks to occupy or destroy. This is disgusting, morally repugnant, and inhumane.

IOC President Kirsty Coventry defends the decision by arguing that athletes should not be punished for the actions of their governments. That argument inverts reality. In russia, sport is an instrument of the state. Leading russian athletes hold military ranks, compete for army and security service sports clubs, and have appeared at rallies celebrating this war. The IOC’s own rules acknowledged this: neutral status required athletes to have no ties to the military or security services and no record of supporting the invasion. By abolishing that vetting, the IOC has not protected innocent athletes. It has dismantled the only safeguard separating individual athletes from the war machine of the state that sponsors them.

The russian state funds these athletes and deploys them as instruments of its propaganda machine. Many have publicly supported the invasion, as has the majority of the russian public.

And if athletes should not pay for the actions of governments, what of Ukraine’s athletes? Hundreds have been killed by russian strikes. Thousands have lost their homes, their coaches, and their training grounds. Ukraine’s athletes are the ones being punished.

“The Olympic Charter speaks of peace and human dignity. There is no reading of those words that allows a state committing crimes against humanity back under the Olympic flame while its bombs still fall on hospitals and schools,” said UWC President Paul Grod. “This is not neutrality. It is complicity.”

The UWC demands:

• The IOC immediately reverse its decision;
• All Olympic sponsors withdraw their sponsorship until it does;
• The international community, its governments, current and former athletes, and citizens, boycott all IOC events and all IOC sponsors for as long as this decision stands.

The Olympic flame is meant to stand for peace. Under this decision, it will burn while russian missiles burn Ukrainian homes, schools, and hospitals, and every medal hung around the neck of a state-sponsored russian athlete will be claimed as a trophy by the regime waging this war. The IOC still has a choice: stand with the victims of aggression, or stand with the aggressor. Reverse this decision, or history will record that the Olympic Movement crowned russia the Olympic Champion of Terror.