By Sophie Kaufman on SwimSwam
The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) lifted the partial bans on Russia and Belarus on Saturday, September 27 by a vote at the IPC general assembly in Seoul, South Korea. Both countries had been suspended from Paralympic competition since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
This is the latest step in a relaxation of those suspensions. In 2023, IPC officials voted for a two-year partial suspension instead of a full ban, which allowed Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete at the 2024 Paralympic Games under neutral flags if approved.
Those suspensions were up this year, which is what put these motions on the IPC’s general assembly docket. IPC member organizations voted 111-55 against a full suspension of Russia with 11 abstentions, then voted 91-77 against partially suspending the country, with eight abstentions. Members voted 119-48 against a full suspension on Belarus with nine abstentions and 103-63 against a partial suspension with ten abstentions.
The IPC said in its press release “this decision means NPC Belarus and NPC Russia now regain their full rights and privileges of IPC membership, in accordance with the IPC Constitution. The IPC will work with the two members involved to put practical arrangements in place for this as soon as reasonably possible.”
The motion to lift the partial suspensions on each country required a 50%+1 majority of all votes cast.
Also on Saturday, the general assembly re-elected Andrew Parsons as IPC president for a third term. The 48-year-old Brazilian has been IPC president since September 2017 and received 109 of 177 valid votes to earn re-election for his final four-year term over South Korean candidate Dong Hyun Bae, who received 68 votes.
This decision to drop the suspensions on Russia and Belarus opens the door for those countries’ athletes to compete under their own flags as soon as the 2026 Paralympic Games in Milano Cortina, Italy. According to the BBC, “athletes will also need individual sporting federations to lift their own bans in order to be allowed to represent their countries rather than enter as neutrals.”
However, while the IPC put out a call for “expressions of interest” to take over governance of para athletics and para swimming in June, it is currently the official governing body for para swimming. So, it seems that for the Russian and Belarussian para swimmers, another governing body is not a barrier to returning to representing their countries in the water at the Paralympics.
In Paris, the Neutral Paralympic Athletes committee was not counted on the official medal table of the Games. The committee’s 16 golds, 14 silvers, and 11 bronzes (41 total) would have put them third on the para swimming medal table with their silver medal count breaking the tie with Italy, which also earned 16 golds but only six silvers.
Ukraine is also a force in the para swimming world and finished 5th on the 2024 Paralympic Games para swimming medal table with eight golds, 15 silvers, and 17 bronzes after winning the most total medals at the 2023 World Para Swimming Championships. Federal investment into the sport played a huge role in the country’s success on the international stage, though Russia’s invasion has destroyed multiple Ukrainian pools. It also forced many of the country’s top athletes to evacuate and stranded a group of para swimmers in Turkey during the initial invasion in 2022.
The Russian Paralympic Committee said in a statement it was a “fair decision” to reinstate the countries and “an important contribution to the development of the international Paralympic movement and an example that the rights of athletes must be protected without discrimination on national and political grounds.”
Russia has loudly called for full reinstatement since the suspensions were first handed down, often citing the IOC’s choice to allow Israel to compete at the Olympic Games as contradictory to the reasons given for its ban.
This argument was inflamed against last week as Christophe Dubi, the IOC Games Executive Director, dismissed the comparison between the two countries and their Olympic committees, as he announced last week that Israel will be allowed to compete at the 2026 Olympics while authorized Russian and Belarusian athletes will compete under neutral flags as they did at the 2024 Olympics.
Neither the Ukraine Paralympic nor Olympic committees released an immediate reaction to the suspensions bring lifted, though AP reported state broadcaster Suspilne said “in Ukraine, it is legally prohibited to delegate national teams to competitions where aggressor countries are represented without observing the principles of neutrality, under state symbols.”
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