EU Sport Commissioner Criticizes World Aquatics’ Decision To Re-Admit Russia & Belarus

Glenn Micallef, the European Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture, and Sport, has criticized World Aquatics’ decision to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete under their national flags again.

“This decision is a grave mistake,” Micallef wrote on X following the decision. “Sport cannot reward aggression. Europe will not accept this normalisation.”

Today we welcomed @EuroAquatics sport into the European Week of Sport family.

A genuine reason to celebrate.

But the same week, @WorldAquatics decided to restore Russia and Belarus under their flags and anthems, while the war against Ukraine continues.

That decision is a grave… pic.twitter.com/mTjU9F51cG

— Glenn Micallef (@GlennMicallef) April 15, 2026

Micallef’s post came in response to World Aquatics lifting neutral status from Russian and Belarusian athletes in April. The decision marked the end of a slew of decisions by the international governing body that slowly reintegrated the two nations back into normal standards of competition. Russian and Belarusian athletes had been competing as individual neutrals since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Micallef is a native of Malta, where he was a prolific politician before taking on his current role in the European Commission in 2024. Now, he serves as the head figure for sports for the European Union’s executive branch. In a speech at a European Parliament session, Micallef reaffirmed his feelings about the World Aquatics decision in the broader context of all sports.

“Russia continues to instrumentalize sports for political purposes,” he told the supranational legislature at the end of April. “Recent decisions by organizations such as the International Water Sports Association to readmit Russia are not isolated incidents. We are seeing a trend…”

He went on to list other instances of Russian reintegration into sports, including talks with the IOC and FIFA. Since this speech, the IOC has stated they were recommending lifting restrictions on all Belarusian athletes.

“Flags, anthems, and uniforms are not neutral,” Micallef added in his speech. “Allowing them is a political choice.”

Russia, historically one of the top-performing countries in aquatic sports, has enjoyed success in its short return to full recognition. The nation’s women’s water polo team came out on top of the Division 2 water polo tournament, qualifying them for the World Cup Final in Sydney this summer. In diving, platform specialist Anna Konanykhina brought back her country’s first World Aquatics medal in the sport in several years by taking silver in the 10m at the World Cup Super Final.

In pool swimming, the world’s largest nation by mass will meet the rest of the world this fall at the “Silk Roads” World Cup. The three-stop competition will take place in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, all former Soviet Union states.

For the European Championships this summer, though, World Aquatics once again finds itself at odds with European entities. European Aquatics, which receives EU funding, has requested that World Aquatics maintain Russia and Belarus’ neutral status through the summer.

It is currently estimated that the conflict in Ukraine has led to 1.8 to 2 million total military casualties (killed, wounded, missing) on both sides. The UN also confirmed that more than 15,000 civilians have been killed, while more than 40,000 have been wounded, though those numbers are thought to be higher.