Russia and Belarus were banned from Paralympics after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but regained full membership after a vote in September 2025.
Russia and Belarus will have a combined 10 para athletes at next month’s Milano Cortina Paralympics the International Paralympic Committee said in a statement on Tuesday.
Both countries were banned from Paralympic competitions after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but regained full membership rights in the IPC after member organisations voted in September 2025 to lift their partial suspensions.
Belarus is a key staging area for the invasion.
International federations for each sport on the Paralympic Games programme had said they would maintain bans on athletes from those countries, but Russia and Belarus won an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport back in December against the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS).
“Following the decision by IPC members at September 2025’s IPC General Assembly … and December’s subsequent Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) decision … both NPCs were eligible to apply for bipartite slots through FIS for the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games in the sports of Para alpine skiing, Para cross-country skiing and Para snowboard,” the IPC said in a statement.
Russia will have two spots in Para alpine skiing, two in Para cross-country skiing and two in Para snowboard.
“NPC (National Paralympic Committee) Belarus has been awarded four slots in total, all in cross-country skiing (one male and three female),” the IPC added.
While the athletes can compete under their own flags at the Paralympics from March 6 to 15, a limited number of Russian and Belarus athletes are competing as independent neutral athletes without flags or anthems at the ongoing Milano Cortina Winter Games, with the Olympic Committees of the two nations still sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee.
The IPC decision left Ukraine’s Vladyslav Heraskevych, who was last week disqualified from the skeleton event at the Milano Cortina Olympics, fuming.
“It’s absurd that they gift some quotas,” Heraskevych, who was disqualified for wanting to wear a helmet depicting Ukrainian athletes killed during Russia’s invasion of his country, told Reuters.
Speaking from Kiev, Heraskevych added: “It’s kind of like we are accepting former soldiers to give them the opportunity to spread Russian propaganda with national flags, with national symbols. So it looks pretty insane.”
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