The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced that the teams from Russia and Belarus will not receive formal invitations to participate in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris due to their aggression against Ukraine. The IOC’s condemnation of Russia and Belarus’s involvement in the conflict in Ukraine was issued in February 2022 after the full-scale ground invasion began. In order to protect the integrity of global sports competitions and the safety of all participants, the IOC recommended that international sports federations and event organizers not invite or allow the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials in international competitions.
Although the two countries will not receive team invitations, individual athletes holding passports from Russia or Belarus may still be allowed to participate as “individual neutral athletes.” The IOC will make this decision at their discretion, without being bound by previous Olympic qualification results. The consideration to allow athletes with Russian and Belarusian passports to participate in international competitions led the Ukrainian government to announce that its athletes should boycott competitions involving Russian and Belarusian participants, including the Olympics.
Russia has criticized the IOC’s recommendations as discriminatory and stated that they will continue to defend the interests of their athletes. It should be noted that excluding certain countries from the Olympic Games is not unprecedented. South Africa was excluded in the 1970s and 80s due to apartheid and UN sanctions, and the former Yugoslavia was excluded in 1992 due to UN sanctions. Japan and Germany were also not invited to participate in the Olympics following World War II.
No official decision has been announced regarding whether Ukraine will boycott the 2024 games. Over 260 Ukrainian athletes have reportedly died since Russia’s ground invasion in February 2022, and Ukrainian Sports Minister Vadym Guttsait has accused Russian athletes of supporting and attending events in support of the war.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/07/14/1187641752/ioc-not-invite-russia-and-belarus-to-2024-olympics
