Russian athletes allowed to participate in Olympic closing ceremony despite being expelled due to war in Ukraine

Russian athletes competing in the Paris Olympics as neutral individual athletes will be allowed to attend the closing ceremony on Sunday, officials said.

Russian athletes were not allowed to attend the opening ceremony and were unable to represent their country in Paris due to the ongoing war against Ukraine.

“The IOC Executive Board has decided that Individual Neutral Athletes (INAs) may participate in the Closing Ceremony of the Olympic Games Paris 2024,” the IOC said in a statement, via Reuters.

Russia was barred from participating in the Paris Olympics because it invaded Ukraine just four days after the 2022 Winter Olympics ended. The International Olympic Committee considered the attack a violation of the Olympic Truce — a resolution calling on all nations to lay down arms and not engage in conflict, starting one week before the Olympics begin and ending one week after they end.

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A rocket is fired from the Russian military's Grad rocket launchers at an undisclosed location in Ukraine. (Russian Defense Ministry press service via AP)

The Russian Olympic Committee lost its appeal against its suspension by the International Olympic Committee in February.

Belarus, which served as a base for the invasion, was also barred from competing in Paris, but all Belarusian athletes competing as neutrals will also be allowed to attend the closing ceremony.

In total, 32 Russian and Belarusian athletes took part in the Paris Games: 17 previously represented Belarus and only 15 Russia. However, most of them returned home after the end of their respective events.

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Belarusians Ivan Litvinovich and Viyaleta Bardzilouskaya became the first athletes from either country to win a medal in Paris, both in trampoline. Litvinovich won gold in the men's event, while Bardzilouskaya took silver in the women's event. Russian tennis players Diana Shnaider and Mirra Andreeva became the first Russian athletes to win a medal in Paris, winning silver in the women's doubles event last Sunday.

Silver medalists Mirra Andreeva and Diana Shnaider of the Individual Neutral Athletes Team pose on the podium during the women's doubles tennis medal ceremony after the women's doubles tennis gold medal match. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

However, these medals are not counted as a collective group in the overall medal table.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Olympic team was also dramatically affected by the Russian invasion.

According to the Ukrainian Sports Ministry, more than 3,000 Ukrainian athletes and coaches fought during the war and nearly 500 of them died. This year, only 140 Ukrainian athletes participated in the Paris Olympics, making it the smallest Summer Olympic delegation in the country's history.

Gold medalist Oleksandr Khyzhniak of the Ukrainian team poses on the podium during the men's 80kg boxing medal ceremony after the men's 80kg boxing final match on day 12 of the Paris Olympics. (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)

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Russia's war against Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, just days after the end of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, has now lasted two years, five months and two weeks.

An exhibition of sports equipment has been set up in Parliament Square in London to honour the 487 Ukrainian athletes killed Since Russia invaded the country, Oleksandr Pielieshenko, who competed in weightlifting at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, and Kateryna Diachenko, an 11-year-old rhythmic gymnast killed in March 2022, have been among those commemorated.

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