The European Commission will boycott the Milan-Cortina Paralympics Opening Ceremony in protest at a decision to let Russian and Belarusian athletes compete under their national flags.
Commissioner for Sport Glenn Micallef said he considered the move “unacceptable” and will not attend the ceremony, which will be hosted at the Verona Arena on 6 March.
“While Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine continues, I cannot support the reinstatement of national symbols, flags, anthems, and uniforms, that are inseparable from that conflict,” he wrote on X.
“For this reason, I will not attend the Paralympics Opening Ceremony.”
Micallef made his announcement after the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) confirmed that six Russian and four Belarusian athletes will be allowed to compete under their national flags this year, telling news agency AFP on Tuesday that they will be treated like those from any other country.
Ukrainian officials will also boycott the Winter Paralympics and will abstain from all official Paralympic events in response to the International Paralympic Committee’s decision to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete under their flags.
Ukraine’s sports minister called the decision “outrageous”.
“The decision by the International Paralympic committee to allow killers and their accomplices to compete at the Paralympic Games under national flags is both disappointing and outrageous,” he wrote on X.
Russian and Belarusian olympians have been prohibited from competing under their flags in the Olympics and Paralympics since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
They are, however, allowed to participate as “individual neutral athletes”, a category that allows people who have qualified for the games to join the competition under certain conditions, such as not actively supporting the invasion and not being contracted to the Russian or Belarusian military or national security agencies.
These conditions were applied in the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris in 2024, and are also the rules for the current Milan-Cortina Olympics, where 13 Russian and seven Belarusian athletes participating in the competition.
But the IPC lifted its suspension during a general assembly in September 2024,while in December, the Swiss-based Sports Administrative Court ruled that excluding Russian and Belarusian athletes from the qualifying rounds violated the International Ski and Snowboard Federation’s statute.
The IPC decided to grant “bipartite slots” to six Russians (a man and a woman in Paralympic alpine skiing, a man and a woman in Paralympic cross-country skiing and two men in Paralympic snowboarding) and four Belarusians (one man and three women in Paralympic cross-country skiing), enabling them to join the competition.
These slots are “awarded to high-quality athletes who for whatever reason have not been able to qualify through the normal means”, the IPC told Euronews.
“Usually this is because of injury or pregnancy, but in this case, it was because the International Ski and Snowboard Federation had not allowed Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in its events, until the Sports Administrative Court decision,” a spokesperson said.
Commissioner Micaleff disputed this choice, claiming it amounts to “fast-tracking participation without qualification”.
The Latvian and Lithuanian Ministers of Foreign Affairs also criticised the latest decision, calling on the IPC to reconsider it urgently.
Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha wrote on X that he has instructed Ukraine’s ambassadors to engage with officials in their host countries and urge them not to attend the Opening Ceremony, unless the decision is reversed.
The final decision to accredit the 10 athletes for the Paralympic Winter Games lies with the Milan-Cortina 2026 Organising Committee and the relevant Italian national authorities, who are responsible for background and security checks.
It will mark the first time a Russian flag has been flown at the Paralympics since the 2014 games in Sochi, Russia.
Days after the competition was over, Moscow troops invaded Ukraine and entered Crimea, annexing Ukrainian peninsula just weeks later.
‘We must not allow this to happen’
The new controversy comes just days after Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych was disqualified from Winter Olympics for wearing a helmet honouring Ukrainian athletes killed in Russia’s war.
The IOC ruled that the helmet was in violation of the Olympic Charter guidelines and could not be used in competition.
When Heraskevych refused to comply, saying it was a gesture of remembrance and not a political statement, he was banned from competing. The IOC’s decision drew anger from officials in Kyiv, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Commenting on the International Paralympic Committee, which operates separately from the IOC, Heraskevych said there are former military personnel in the Russian Paralympic team.
“That means yesterday they were killing Ukrainians in Ukraine, and tomorrow they will continue to do so, spreading Russian propaganda at the international level. We must not allow this to happen.”
The head of the Russian Paralympic Committee said in September 2025 that about 30 Russian soldiers who had participated in Moscow’s war against Ukraine had joined Russia’s Paralympic teams, but there are no former Russian military personnel among the six who have been given the opportunity to participate in the 2026 Paralympics.
Ukraine’s Paralympic team has included athletes whose disabilities resulted from injuries sustained while fighting on the front lines against Russia.
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