Russian, Belarusian athletes to compete under national flags at 2026 Winter Paralympics
Six athletes from Russia and four from Belarus will compete under their national flags at the upcoming Winter Paralympic Games in Milan, despite the ongoing full-scale war against Ukraine, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) confirmed in a statement to multiple media outlets on Feb. 17.
It will mark the first time the Russian flag has flown at the Paralympics since the 2014 Games in Sochi.
The IPC has extended bipartite commission invitations to six Russian athletes and four Belarusians. These invitations are given to individual athletes, rather than their international federations, and are distributed at the discretion of the IPC. They allow entry for competitors who may not otherwise qualify via typical channels due to extraordinary circumstances — such as, in this case, international sanctions.
The invitations follow the IPC's decision in September 2025 to reinstate the membership rights of Russia and Belarus. Both countries were banned in 2022 following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The IPC had previously suspended Russia in 2016 over a state-backed doping scandal.
In 2023, a partial suspension was instituted, allowing athletes from Russia and Belarus to participate as "neutral" competitors.
After the bans were overturned in fall 2025, the four sports federations governing the winter Paralympic events opted to maintain the partial suspension. Russia and Belarus then won an appeal against the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
The successful appeal paved the way for Russian and Belarusian athletes to represent their countries in skiing and snowboarding at the 2026 Paralympic Games.
Pavel Rozhkov, Russian Paralympic Committee (RPC) President, told the Russian state news agency TASS that the six athletes representing Moscow are alpine skiers Aleksey Bugayev and Varvara Voronchikhina, cross-country skiers Ivan Golubkov and Anastasia Bagiyan, and snowboarders Dmitry Fadeyev and Philipp Shebbo.
Four of those six athletes have already been granted entry visas to Italy, Rozhkov said. The snowboarders' visas are still pending.
Belarusian Paralympic Committee Secretary General Nikolai Shudeiko said four cross-country skiers will represent Minsk at the upcoming Games. The Belarusian athletes are Valentina Birilo, Lidiya Loban, Darya Fedkovich, and Roman Sviridenko.
The Russian and Belarusian athletes will be "treated like (those from) any other country," the IPC said, indicating there will be no restrictions on the countries' national insignia, anthems, or flags.
Valeriy Shuskevych, head of Ukraine's Paralympic Committee, met the IPC's decision with outrage.
"I am very, very angry and outraged by the decision to allow six Russian athletes to compete under their national flag," he told Agence France-Presse (AFP). "This is terrible."
Ukraine's Paralympic team has included athletes whose disabilites resulted from injuries sustained while fighting on the front lines against Russia.
Hundreds of Ukrainian athletes and coaches have been killed by Russia's all-out war, and hundreds of sports facilities have been destroyed by Russian missile and drone attacks. Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych was recently banned from the Winter Olympic Games for wearing a helmet with images of Ukrainians athletes killed by Russia — a move the IOC deemed a violation of guidelines against "politics" at the Games.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) still bans the Russian and Belarusian national teams from the Olympic Games.
While athletes from both countries are allowed to compete in individual events under a "neutral" status, many Russian athletes who compete as "neutral" in international competitions have ties to the Kremlin or have expressed support for the war against Ukraine.
