Russia and Belarus are banned from the 2026 Winter Olympics as national delegations. The International Olympic Committee confirmed in May 2025 that neither country can compete under its own flag, anthem or name at the Milano Cortina Games due to their involvement in the ongoing war in Ukraine. But “banned” doesn’t mean absent. Twenty athletes holding Russian or Belarusian passports cleared a rigorous vetting process and will compete as Individual Neutral Athletes, or AIN, across eight sports.
The distinction matters. These aren’t Russian Olympians. They won’t march in the Opening Ceremony, and any medals they win won’t appear in the official standings. For a country that dominated winter sports for decades, Milano Cortina represents the lowest point in a collapse that started with doping and accelerated with war.
Why Russia and Belarus Are Banned from the 2026 Winter Olympics
Russia’s Olympic exile didn’t happen in one stroke. It’s the product of three overlapping sanctions, each triggered by a different provocation. The first was doping. In 2017, the IOC suspended Russia after investigators confirmed a state-sponsored doping scheme that tainted at least 15 medal winners from the 2014 Sochi Games.
Russian athletes competed at Pyeongchang 2018 as “Olympic Athletes from Russia,” stripped of their flag and anthem. At Beijing 2022, they competed as the “Russian Olympic Committee,” sending 212 athletes and finishing with 32 medals.
Then came the invasion. Russia launched its full-scale assault on Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, days after the Beijing Closing Ceremony and in direct violation of the Olympic Truce. The IOC banned both Russia and Belarus from international competition within the week, citing the need “to protect the integrity of global sports competitions and for the safety of all the participants.”
MORE: What Time Is the 2026 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony?
The third blow was self-inflicted. In October 2023, the IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee after it incorporated sports councils from four illegally annexed Ukrainian regions: Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia. The IOC called it “a breach of the Olympic Charter because it violates the territorial integrity of the NOC of Ukraine.”
That suspension cut off all IOC funding. Combined with a second WADA non-compliance ruling in September 2023, Russia found itself under three simultaneous sanctions from different bodies for different violations.
Who Can Still Compete: The AIN Framework and What It Means
The IOC didn’t shut the door completely. In March 2023, it created the Individual Neutral Athlete designation, allowing Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete without national symbols if they passed strict background checks. An independent panel that included former NBA star Pau Gasol reviewed each applicant. Athletes with ties to the military, security agencies or who publicly supported the war were disqualified.
A total of 20 athletes cleared the process: 13 Russian (six men, seven women) and seven Belarusian (all women). They’ll compete across eight sports, including figure skating, cross-country skiing and freestyle skiing. No team events are allowed, which means no Russian men’s hockey team, which won gold in 2018 and silver in 2022.
Welcome to #MilanoCortina2026, @LindseyVonn 🙌 pic.twitter.com/MXmzABjh2l
— The Olympic Games (@Olympics) February 6, 2026
The most watched AIN athlete will likely be 18-year-old figure skater Adeliia Petrosian, the three-time Russian national champion and first female skater to land a quadruple loop in competition. She won the ISU Skate to Milano qualifying event in September with a score of 209.63, and she’s the latest prodigy from coach Eteri Tutberidze, whose skater Kamila Valieva was at the center of the doping scandal that overshadowed Beijing 2022. Belarusian freestyle skier Hanna Huskova, who won aerials gold in 2018 and silver in 2022, is the other notable medal contender.
They compete under a teal flag with a specially composed anthem. If Petrosian wins gold, there will be no Russian flag raised, no anthem played and no addition to any medal tally.
The scale of the decline tells the story. At Pyeongchang 2018, 168 Russian athletes competed under the OAR banner. At Beijing 2022, 212 competed as the ROC and won 32 medals. At Paris 2024, just 15 competed as AIN. In Milano Cortina, it’s 13. Russia’s winter sports footprint has shrunk by more than 90 percent in eight years. The Kremlin tried to counter the narrative by launching a rival multi-sport event after Paris, but the project stalled and was abandoned. For now, Russia’s Olympic presence fits in a single bus.
