While the Milano Olympic Games have now reached their end, Putin is celebrating the acquisition of countless new victims in his international influence campaigns. The Kremlin has taken advantage of the Olympics’ massive stage to conduct yet another influence operation against Ukraine. Research findings exposed 43 instances of fake news narratives painting Ukrainian athletes and fans as corrupt and unlikeable, in an attempt to sway the West away from continued support for the country.
Despite Putin’s clear malicious efforts to exploit international sports to evade accountability for the war in Ukraine, some international sports leaders are pushing to lift Russia’s participation ban and allow athletes to compete under their national flag. And the Trump administration has indicated it is backing these efforts to welcome Russia back, with the President’s Special Envissary, Paulo Zampolli, endorsing Russia's participation in next month's Paralympic Games. Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has no precedent in recent history and Putin views any sort of presence in the international arena as an opportunity to legitimize and distract from his aggressions. FIFA and the Olympics should reject any participation until an end to fighting is reached in Ukraine.
As the U.S. prepares to co-host the FIFA World Cup this year, president Gianni Infantino has announced his interest in welcoming Russia back into the fold. This news comes after the Paralympic Committee and International Judo Federation both announced in late 2025 they would remove the bans on Russia. Though it is too late for Russia to qualify for the World Cup or participate in the Winter Olympics, even opening the discourse about readmission is a win for Putin.
Although Russia has been banned from these events since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, both Russia and Belarus sent athletes to this year’s Winter Olympics under neutral flags. The IOC suspended Russia in 2017 for the doping scheme, and Russia’s full-scale invasion just tightened this ban. FIFA and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) indefinitely banned Russians in February 2022, with UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin settingspecific terms: “When the war stops, they will be readmitted.” As a result of the continued aggression, both Russia and Belarus were banned from competing in the 2024 ParisOlympics. However, since October 2023, FIFA and UEFA have ended bans on Russian participation in youth World Cup tournaments.
While there is something to be said to credit diplomacy through sport, this only goes so far. Putin is a master propagandist, and international sporting events provide him with immense visibility and the opportunity to rally Russians around the flag. International sporting events have long been a stage for the Kremlin to attempt to project its great-power prestige vis-à-vis the West. During the Cold War, the USSR’s sports committee set out to “help Soviet athletes win world supremacy in major sports,” spending the contemporary amount of $8.2 billion on equipment in the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games to achieve these ends. In 2018, Russia hosted the FIFA World Cup; the British foreign secretary at the time, Boris Johnson, warned Putin would use the football World Cup to bolster Russia’s image, as Adolf Hitler did for Germany during the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. After Russia hosted the 2018 FIFA World Cup, Putin awarded FIFA President Gianni Infantino with the “Order of Friendship” award.
The Kremlin would no doubt take any opportunity to make Russia’s participation in international sports into campaigns against the West. Russian authorities have called their exclusion from international sporting competitions “unfair” and suggested it as a U.S.-orchestrated act of persecution. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova emphasized, "The IOC must return world sport to world sport. Olympism must be distinguished by dignity and athletic achievement, not gender perversion and political madness."
And this goes beyond the playing field. For Putin, a win is a win, regardless of the domain. Welcoming Russia back onto the international sports field is an acceptance of Putin’s violent, illegal actions. European Sport Commissioner Glenn Micallef and Ukraine's sports minister Matvii Bidnyi both responded to Infantino, with Bidnyi suggesting how “irresponsible” it was to “detach football from the reality…since the start of Russia’s full-scale aggression, more than 650 Ukrainian athletes and coaches have been killed...”
Offering Russia a spot in international sports competitions would only de-incentivize Putin from coming to the negotiating table. Putin detests the global isolation the West has placed on him. Sanctions have placed Putin under extreme economic pressure, threatening both regime stability and his bloated war machine. To deter Putin from continuing the war, the West must make him believe it is willing to stand resolute on all of its promises to Ukraine. And this includes remaining resolute with sports bans. Any level of concession, even on the football field, degrades the West’s credibility in its intentions to hold Putin accountable.
If Russia wants to participate in the Olympic Games in 2028 in Los Angeles, Putin should first stop the war. If Putin is not willing to play by the rules, then he should not be allowed in the game.
Ivana Stradner is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies
