Ukraine’s National Olympic Committee has filed a complaint with the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne in response to the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) decision to lift restrictions on the Russian Olympic Committee. Ukraine intends to challenge the decision.
In its filing, Ukraine is asking the court to overturn the IOC’s decision to reinstate the Russian committee. Kyiv believes the decision was made “prematurely and without proper verification” that the violations which led to the initial ban had been remedied.
The central issue is the Russian Olympic Committee’s activity in the occupied territories of Ukraine, which Russia continues to regard as part of its own sporting space. It was precisely the inclusion of Olympic councils from the occupied Ukrainian territories that led to the suspension of the ROC’s IOC membership in October 2023.
However, in early July, an IOC commission concluded that these violations had been addressed sufficiently. In December 2025, the ROC removed the Olympic councils of all occupied regions from its membership and pledged not to operate in the annexed Ukrainian territories. However, Sports Minister and ROC head Mikhail Degtyarev later insisted that the ROC had “not renounced any territories”:
“Nobody surrendered anything. The Olympic Committee operates across all of Russia; 89 Olympic councils have been dissolved. These are vestigial entities that have done nothing for 30 years and, all told, have burned through more than a billion rubles... We dissolved all 89 of them, and in doing so pulled the legal rug out from under the International Olympic Committee. They had nowhere left to turn and had to restore our status,” he said (as quoted by the state-owned news agency TASS)
The ROC’s reinstatement also rescinds all previously standing recommendations requiring Russian athletes to compete exclusively under neutral status. However, the IOC will not hold events in Russia and will not invite Russian officials to events under its auspices. Following this move, several sports federations announced the reinstatement of Russian athletes (1, 2), though there were also exceptions.
Ukraine is not alone in opposing the decision. Nine EU countries previously called on the European Commission to strip the IOC and other international sports organizations of funding over the admission of Russian athletes.
