Russians and Belarusians will not take part in the parade of athletes at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics in July, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said Tuesday.
The athletes from the two countries who qualify for the Games will be competing as independents without their flags and anthems following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The opening ceremony in Paris will not be held in a stadium but will be staged on the River Seine with teams floating past an estimated 300,000 spectators.
The Russians and Belarusians, who will be competing as individual neutral athletes under a specially created flag and with an anthem without lyrics produced by the IOC, will not be part of that parade.
"They will not participate in the parade of delegations during the opening ceremony, since they are individual athletes," the Olympic body said following an executive board meeting.
But it said they would be experiencing all other parts of the opening ceremony apart from the team parade.
"This decision is the logical consequence of the fact that the athletes with Russian and Belarusian passports are not selected as delegations but as individual athletes," Paris 2024 Games organizers said in a statement following the IOC decision.
The IOC said those athletes who do qualify will then be vetted by a three-member IOC panel in order to meet the eligibility criteria that the Olympic body established for Russians and Belarusians. The panel is headed by IOC Vice President Nicole Hoevertsz and includes ex-NBA champion Pau Gasol and South Korean former Olympic table tennis champion Ryu Seung-min.
Athletes who actively support the war or are contracted to the military or security agencies will not be allowed to take part.
The IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee in October for recognizing regional Olympic councils for Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine — Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
The IOC said an estimated 36 Russian and 22 Belarusian athletes are expected to make the cut for Paris, compared to 330 Russians at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Belarus had a team of 104 at those Games.
Earlier on Tuesday the IOC criticized Russia's plans to host their own "Friendship Games" later in 2024, saying it was politicizing sports and violating the Olympic Charter.
Russia said last year it planned to relaunch the multisport Friendship Games in 2024, 40 years after its first edition.
"The IOC notes that, contrary to the Fundamental Principles of the Olympic Charter and the resolutions by the U.N. General Assembly, the Russian government intends to organize purely politically motivated sports events in Russia," the IOC said in a statement.
"The Russian government created and funded the 'International Friendship Association' (IFA), in order to host the summer and winter 'Friendship Games,'" it said.
Russia's announcement last year came with their athletes and those of ally Belarus having been largely frozen out of international competition by federations in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Russia plans to hold the first edition of the summer Friendship Games in September with the winter edition planned for 2026 in Sochi, site of the 2014 Winter Olympics.
"For this purpose, the Russian government has launched a very intensive diplomatic offensive by having government delegations and ambassadors, as well as ministerial and other governmental authorities, approaching governments around the world," the IOC said.
"To make their purely political motivation even more obvious, they are deliberately circumventing the sports organisations in their target countries. It is a cynical attempt by the Russian Federation to politicise sport," the IOC said.
It said Russia's doping track record and it's anti-doping agency's noncompliance with the World Anti-Doping Agency code was also affecting the integrity of any sports competition held there.
"The IOC strongly urges all stakeholders of the Olympic Movement and all governments to reject any participation in, and support of, any initiative that intends to fully politicise international sport," the IOC said.
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