By With a little less than one year until the Winter Olympics unfold in Italy, Russia’s hope to do battle on snow and ice on the world’s biggest sports stage appear to melt by the day.
Unless peace quickly comes to Ukraine and the International Olympic Committee and Moscow suddenly repair their long-fraught relationship, Russian athletes could be largely frozen out of their second consecutive Olympics.
“With only one year to go, we’re looking at a similar situation in Paris,” said David Wallechinsky, a former president of the International Society of Olympic Historians. “You don’t know 100%, but I’d say there’s a strong likelihood that Russia will not compete … as an independent country” in the 2026 Winter Games.
Russia was largely absent from Paris last summer, with only a handful of its athletes qualifying as neutrals. The only medal it won was in women’s doubles tennis, in which Mirra Andreeva and Diana Shnaider captured silver.
Russia’s potential ban from Milano Cortina 2026 could be even more dramatic with NHL superstars being sidelined and the best figure skaters possibly sitting it out.
Shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, Russian athletes competed as a part of the “Unified Team” in 1992 in Albertville, France, with the Soviet republics still together for the games. But since 1994 in Lillehammer, Norway, Russian winter athletes have competed as the Russian Federation (2014, 2010, 2006, 2002, 1998, 1994), the Russian Olympic Committee, or “ROC” (2022), and the Olympic Athletes from Russia, or “OAR” (2018).
The latter two monikers were used after the World Anti-Doping Agency found Russia had been running state-sponsored doping schemes.
Russian athletes competing under their flag won 120 winter medals (46 gold, 39 silver, 35 bronze) since 1994, the sixth most of any country.
Russian athletes have won 49 medals under the ROC or OAR monikers, which, if added to the “Russia” totals, would put that group within striking distance of winter powerhouses the United States and Canada.
“Sports is super important for Russia. It’s very important internally, because Russia usually fields very strong teams in international sports competitions, so it tends to validate for the Russian population the power of Russia,” said Thomas J. Kent, who teaches international affairs at Columbia University, with an expertise in Russian propaganda and disinformation.
“And it’s really the same thing internationally. It tells the world that Russia is a clever and powerful country with excellent athletes and is a force to be reckoned with.”
Team Russia has absolutely dominated figure skating in recent years, capturing 14 gold, nine silver and three bronze medals since 1994. That 26-medal count, which far outdistances those of the United States and Canada, doesn’t even include six podium trips for ROC and three for OAR skaters.
Despite the current ban against the Olympic committees of Russia and close ally Belarus, individual world sports federations could allow some Russians to compete as “neutral athletes” with absolutely no visible ties to their country.
Figure skating’s world governing body, the International Skating Union, has asked Russia to present a list of names by Feb. 28 for consideration to compete as neutrals in 2026, officials said.
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“We know that some [sports] federations have either already made a decision or are close to making a decision that will provide an opportunity for our athletes, at least for our individual athletes, to take part in Olympic competitions, in the Olympic cycle,” Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said. “This is good news.”
Russia wants its athletes to be in Italy, even if it would mean doing so without a Russian flag.
“We consider restrictions unfair and strive for a complete lifting of those so that our athletes can compete under the national flag. However, we do not refuse to participate even under current conditions,” Russian Olympic Committee President Mikhail Degtyarev said. “We continue the dialogue with the international community to expand opportunities for Russian athletes, and the restoration of the ROC status, which we are confident will happen in the foreseeable future, will accelerate this process.”
Russian players, competing under the OAR banner, won gold in men’s ice hockey in 2018 and could field a star-packed team in 2026.
A potential Russian team would include playmaker extraordinaire Nikita Kucherov of the Tampa Bay Lightning and No. 2 all-time NHL goal scorer Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals up front.
Russia would have an embarrassment of goaltending riches with Andrei Vasilevskiy of the Lightning, Igor Shesterkin of the New York Rangers and Ilya Sorokin of the New York Islanders vying for time.
Degtyarev bluntly said no hockey team could rightly consider itself a world champion without playing Russia.
“ROC is actively working to restore the status and admit Russian athletes to the 2026 Olympics,” Degtyarev said. “Of course, our colleagues should be interested in a positive outcome, because no serious hockey tournament without Russians can be considered truly competitive.”
Moscow desperately wants to showcase its powerful hockey team in Italy.
Russian hockey federation president Vladislav Tretiak went as far as calling IOC action against his players an offense to their “human rights” — in a particularly outsized criticism, given the carnage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the deaths of more than 12,000 Ukrainian citizens, according to a United Nations report issued last month.
“This is a violation of the rights of hockey players; this is a violation of human rights,” said Tretiak, who is considered one of the greatest goaltenders in hockey history. “Well, we will continue to defend our position, defend the interests of our guys, our hockey, our Russian sport.”
Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, just days after the Beijing Winter Games came to an end. China denied a New York Times report at the time that Beijing asked Moscow to delay the attack on Ukraine until after the closing ceremonies.
At the time, Russian President Vladimir Putin surely had an inkling that his invasion would probably have a terrible impact on Russia’s future Olympic aspirations, said Mietek Boduszyński, who teaches U.S. foreign policy at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
“Let’s say that he did take Ukraine and took it quickly. That wouldn’t have reduced the outside world outrage, right?” Boduszyński said. “But I guess in the end, the prize of taking Ukraine was bigger, bigger than” the risk losing Olympic participation.
But Kent believes Putin rolled the dice with hopes that backlash against Russia would have subsided by Paris 2024 and surely in time for Milan Cortina 2026.
“I think that they thought that the conquest of Ukraine would be very quick and very successful and that any international resistance would blow over,” Kent said. “And in Olympic terms, [it would blow over] in time for 2024 or maybe the next [2026]. While I don’t think it was their top issue, I do not think they expected international condemnation to be as strong as it was or that Ukrainian resistance to be what it’s been.”
