The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) rejected the appeal of the Russian Olympic Committee, which contested its suspension decided in mid-October by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in connection with the conflict in Ukraine, announced the body based in Lausanne Friday.
An “unprecedented discrimination” according to the Russian Olympic Committee
The IOC thus intends to sanction the placement under the authority of the Russian body of sports organizations in the regions of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhia, located in eastern Ukraine and occupied by the Russian army, recalls the CAS in a press release. The court based in Lausanne also indicates that its decision is, at its level, “final and binding” but that it can be appealed within 30 days to the Swiss Federal Court.
In response, the Russian Olympic Committee called the measure “unprecedented discrimination” in a statement on Friday. She considered that the CAS had “long since lost its objectivity in everything concerning Russia”, accusing it of being a “political instrument” in the service of the West. On the eve of the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the CAS considered that the IOC had “not undermined the principles of legality, equality, predictability and proportionality”.
Meeting in Bombay on October 12 for its 141st session, the IOC had shaken up its agenda to react to the “unilateral decision” taken a week earlier by the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) to annex four Ukrainian sports organizations.
A suspension which is added to a range of sanctions from the IOC
“The IOC is satisfied with the confirmation by the CAS of the decision of the IOC executive committee,” a spokesperson for the body told AFP, according to whom the annexation decided by the ROC “constitutes an offense against the Olympic Charter, as it violates the territorial integrity of the Ukrainian National Olympic Committee. The Russian Olympic Committee seized the CAS on November 6.
The now confirmed suspension of the ROC was added to a range of sanctions taken by the IOC from the end of February 2022, just after the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army: ban on any international competition on Russian soil as well as ‘to allied Belarus, and all the official symbols of the two countries on the fields and world podiums. This measure by the IOC also has the effect of depriving the ROC of Olympic funding.
However, it has no consequences for the presence of Russian and Belarusian athletes who did not support the Russian invasion of Ukraine, under a neutral banner, at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, authorized at the beginning of December by the IOC. Criteria that the Russian Olympic Committee once again described as “humiliating”, considering that the CAS was doing “everything possible to minimize the number of (Russian) athletes invited” to participate in the Paris Olympics.