Russian and Belarusian athletes will be able to don their national colors again in World Aquatics events.
The global governing body announced Monday that its “Guidelines for Athlete Participation in Aquatics Events During a Period of Political Conflict” will no longer apply to senior Russian and Belarusian athletes following a decision by the World Aquatics Bureau.
In February, World Aquatics removed the neutrality restrictions on junior athletes from the two nations, allowing them to wear their national symbols and flags in competition and have their national anthem played.
Now, those rules will apply to all aquatic athletes from Russia and Belarus, ending a four-year saga that started in March 2022 when Russians and Belarusians were barred from international competition following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In September 2023, World Aquatics opened the door for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete as individual neutrals. Three Belarusian swimmers and one Russian compete at the 2024 Olympics as neutral athletes. At the 2024 Short Course World Championships, Belarusians and Russians were permitted to compete in team events for the first time, fielding relays while competing under Neutral Athletes A (Belarus) and Neutral Athletes B (Russia).
The NAB Russian team won three relay gold medals at the 2024 SC Worlds, and followed up by claiming two long course world titles last summer in Singapore.
The NAB men’s 4×100 medley relay squad of Miron Lifintsev, Kirill Prigoda, Andrei Minakov and Egor Kornev broke the European and Championship Records en route to victory in Singapore in a time of 3:26.93, and the mixed 4×100 medley relay quartet of Lifintsev, Prigoda, Daria Klepikova and Daria Trofimova dominated their way to gold by over two seconds, also breaking the Championship Record.
Additionally, Russian native Kliment Kolesnikov won the world title in the men’s 50 back while representing NAB.
“Over the last three years, World Aquatics and the AQIU have successfully helped ensure that conflict can be kept outside the sporting competition venues,” World Aquatics President Husain Al Musallam said. “We are determined to ensure that pools and open water remain places where athletes from all nations can come together in peaceful competition.”
At the 2025 European Short Course Championships last December, Russian and Belarusian swimmers did not end up competing due to a decision made by the host nation, Poland, though European Aquatics had eased its restrictions on Russians and Belarusians one month earlier.
With European Aquatics following World Aquatics’ guidelines last year, Russian and Belarusian swimmers are expected to be eligible to compete at the 2026 European Aquatics Championships in Paris.
World Aquatics said that Russian and Belarusian athletes will need to pass at least four successive anti-doping tests and have background checks completed by the Integrity Unit (AQIU) before being cleared to compete.
Did I miss the announcement when WA similarly banned Israel and USA….
If they applied the rules consistently than USA and Israel would be banned as well.
Either your organisation bans people from politics or it doesn’t. Sanity has prevailed.
Don’t get me wrong, Russia and Belarus are 100% in the wrong in regards to Ukraine. But they’ve killed multitudes fewer innocent people than Israel and USA in the same timeframe
Is it really “multitudes fewer”, or is it just doesn’t matter to you because it happens to the people you couldn’t care less about? Or is there some threshold which has to be exceeded for mass murder to stop being ok?
People he doesn’t care about. Some people like this are surprisingly okay with terrorist regimes that want to murder millions and ethnically cleansing tens of thousands of Ukrainian children.
Lmfao. This has to be a joke? Right?
There is evidence of Russia kidnapping tens of thousands of children. There are hours of video of Russians deliberately targeting civilians with drones. Russia has dropped cluster munitions on residential neighborhoods, bombed churches and hospitals with no dual use and not co-located with military infrastructure. Just look up some basic facts.
Hamas and Iran Co-Locate military installations inside civilian infrastructure and force the civilians to remain inside hoping they won’t get bombed. Tell me one time you didn’t see a Hamas or Iranian leader in public not surrounded by children.
The rule they applied to Russia was that Russia annexed Ukrainian sporting organizations in violation of international recognition, making the political matter a specifically sporting matter.
It was actually a really clever parsing of the matter, because I’m not sure I believe that was the original reason, but it was the reason they brought before the appeals court.
Regardless of how one feels about Russia vs. the USA vs. Israel, that is something that Russia did and the USA and Israel did not do, and it does make the Russia matter explicitly sporting.
However they tried to uphold it in court, that was clearly not the message they were going to send by their actions.
“Hi yes this is a paperwork issue, more than anything. Feel free to Do A War of Aggression whenever, that’s not our purview, but it is if you also mess with their intramural pickleball registrations.”
Win for Putin. Loss for Ukraine. It just that simple
LOL they really have no choice now thanks to the USA, otherwise they’d had to suspend the USA and Israel for what they are doing in the Middle East! And we all know there’s no way on gods green earth world aquatics have the balls to suspend the mighty USA. Well done Trump you got Russia reinstated 🤣
THIS x100000000000000
This is a controversial opinion I think.
But, it did not help anyone to suspend Russian participation over the war in Ukraine. We didn’t suspend American participation over Vietnam, we didn’t suspend Chinese participation over Tibet. We didn’t suspend Soviet Participation over Afghanistan. Etc… it wasn’t really a workable standard to begin with. It didn’t end the conflict, it didn’t stop any of the awful things Russia is doing to the Ukrainians.
It just didn’t end up mattering and for an international body actions like this need to matter before they happen.
I have a mixed opinion. I agree it didnt help force change, but it did in a sympolic way show respect for Ukranians.
On the other hand, the host nation for 2028 has threatened Greenland and attacked Venezuela and Iran. Sanctions for all or sanctions for none.
I can hate everything that both the former and the latter have done in both respects.
Well, there was the boycott of the 1980 Olympics because of Russia’s invasion of Afganistan … which didn’t workout well for the athletes who were forced to boycott.
I’d consider that a principled position that was worth taking, but also ineffective.
If Russia were to be effected by their government’s actions then there is a longer list of countries that also deserved to be effected.
Hopefully this illuminates how athletes are often just regular people trying to live their lives and are not representative of extreme views held by only a portion that are in power.
The war is over! Good news!
Nahhhh everyone just got distracted by the other war.
So, four years is a max time limit after which a genocidal war magically becomes ok to everyone unaffected personally. Good to know.
I’ve been thinking about that for more than a year. Many of the Ukrainian athletes continue to post videos and pictures of the atrocities, on their Instagram. But obviously to lesser impact. Scroll instead of shock and outrage.
Swimming always seemed fragile and willing to succumb to dollars and whataboutism. I’m confident that Sebastian Coe won’t be as pathetic. Of course, one of the reasons Coe had no chance to be elected IOC president was that the delegation realized he would draw a hard line against Russian reinstatement.
I should have taken up marathon running as my midlife crisis sport, like all normal people, then. A shame though. Swimming feels much better.