The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has lifted its partial suspensions on the national Paralympic committees (NPCs) of Russia and Belarus. Both thereby regain the “full rights and privileges of IPC membership.”
The suspensions resulted from a vote at the IPC General Assembly of 2023 and were grounded in “breaches of constitutional membership obligations.” What these breaches were is unclear, but they seem to relate to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Belarus’s support for Russia. According to an analysis by the BBC, Russia’s suspension was due not to the invasion itself but to its use of sporting events to “promote the war on Ukraine,” such promotion being “against the IPC’s constitution.”
Russian and Belarusian Paralympic athletes have of late – as at the Paris Olympics – been competing under a neutral flag.
