The International Olympic Committee (IOC) handed Vladimir Putin a gift he could not win on the battlefield. This week, the IOC provisionally reinstated the Russian Olympic Committee, clearing a path for a full Russian team at the 2028 Los Angeles Games. The decision came one day after Russian missiles flattened apartment buildings in Kyiv, killing dozens of Ukrainians. America hosts the next Summer Olympic Games.
We have the power that the IOC refused to use.
A ban that was never about the war
The IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) in October 2023, but the suspension had nothing to do with Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The IOC acted only because Russia’s committee absorbed the regional sports councils in the occupied regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. That was a paperwork offense. Kill thousands of civilians, and the IOC shrugs.
But when Russia redrew its org chart, it began clearing the path for the Russian flag to fly here.
The IOC’s release rests on one assurance. Russia told the IOC what it wanted to hear. “It does not, and will not, conduct any activities in these territories.” But at home, Russia’s Ministry of Sport told Tsargrad, a hard-line Russian outlet, that this is simply temporary and a paperwork issue. No competitions will be staged in those regions for now, “for security reasons.” Athletes from these associations continue to qualify anywhere else in Russia, exactly as before. The Kremlin simply deleted the names of the sports councils in the occupied territories from EGRUL, the state register of legal entities. The athletes, the money, and the flag all stay. Moscow and Lausanne wrote each other a permission slip that they believe gives Russia the right to fly the Russian flag in Los Angeles.
Remember what the IOC chooses to ignore
Russia launched its full invasion in February 2022, in the middle of the “Olympic Truce” for the Beijing Games. Russia itself co-sponsored that truce at the UN weeks earlier. At the time, the IOC condemned the breach in the strongest terms. Then it spent four years shrinking the offense down to a filing error. The war has killed, wounded, or left missing more than 2 million soldiers on both sides, per the think tank CSIS. That toll likely tops the Battle of Stalingrad. The day before the IOC’s announcement, Russian missiles and drones killed at least 26 people in and around Kyiv, most of them asleep in their homes.
I cannot tell you what happened behind closed doors in Lausanne. No one has shown that Russia bought this decision. But the IOC has demonstrated itself susceptible to corruption before. Ten of its members were expelled or resigned after Salt Lake City’s bid committee plied them with more than $1 million in cash, gifts, and scholarships. Regardless of whether it involved corruption, the IOC’s minimizing of Russia’s Ukraine invasion hardly makes it the paragon of spinal fortitude.
When a body with that record hands someone like Putin what he wants, it should trigger an investigative feeding frenzy.
This is who the IOC thinks should march in LA
Russian Olympic sport is state-owned. CSKA, the club that anchors the national Olympic team, states in its own charter that it is subordinate to the Ministry of Defense and part of the armed forces. Some Russian athletes are literally employees of the Russian military. Its sister club, Dynamo, answers to the interior ministry and the security services. At the Tokyo Games, athletes holding military ranks won 86% of Russia’s medals. A Russian team in LA means hosting an arm of a state waging a war of aggression that our NATO allies oppose vigorously.
The IOC’s own “neutral status” rules barred any athlete contracted to the Russian military or security agencies. But on Tuesday, it threw that standard away.
Demonstrating that spinal fortitude again, the IOC still refuses to invite Russian government officials to its events. It will do favors for Putin, but it doesn’t want its reputation tarnished by the association. Laussanne thinks Americans should do the explicit reputation laundering.
Please share this because until we can get people organized, the only way to stop this is to spread the word about the IOC’s capitulation.
Three demands
Just because the IOC refused to do the right thing does not mean Americans must follow suit.
There should be no athletes representing the Russian state at LA28. The flag that flies over Bucha and Mariupol has no place in an American stadium. Period.
The US federal government should deny US entry to anyone who is sanctioned, holds a military or security service rank, works within CSKA or Dynamo structures, or has publicly backed the war. This asks the State Department to enforce the exact standard the IOC just abandoned. Nobody can call that anti-Olympic. I am guessing the Trump administration will try to resist this, which is all the more reason Americans should demand that they act. The theme of President Trump’s presidency has been that visas are our call, or, in this case, has the administration traded America First for Swiss bureaucrats first?
No Russian flag, anthem, or state officials on American soil, whatever the IOC decides about symbols later. The IOC itself still bars Russian officials from its own events. Asking the US to match that posture is airtight.
These are not ridiculous or unachievable demands, but they do require that Americans relearn how federalism works and that Democrats get better at politics.
Start in Los Angeles
The LA City Council should pass a resolution supporting all three demands and move first. State legislators and California’s members of Congress should follow. This should be a grassroots movement. Every community and every candidate on a 2026 ballot anywhere should answer one question on the record. Do Russian state athletes belong at an American Olympics while Russia bombs Ukrainian cities?
American communities across the country going on record demanding the Russian flag be blocked from Los Angeles, while it is leveling apartment blocks in Kyiv, will force action from the administration. It will leave them with a choice: Are they going to allow it or not? If Democrats send a petition or Chuck Schumer makes a speech about it, it will be easy for the administration to ignore. But communities across the country demanding this is a different story. They would have to explain and spin how they are not normalizing Russia hundreds of times. Leave it to Chuck Schumer and, yeah, MSNOW will cover it, but none of the MAGA propaganda outlets masquerading as news sites will touch it, and millions of Ukraine-supporting Americans in our vast news deserts won’t hear a peep about this.
In politics, if you’re explaining, you’re losing, but Democrats in Washington seem not to realize that press releases to the national media do not make it to these information deserts. This political malpractice lets Republicans off the hook by not even forcing them to respond. This time, it will mean that Russia will proudly march in Los Angeles.
But current polling shows that supporting Ukraine has actually increased since Trump’s re-election. That’s right. Only only 3% for Americans Russia, the benefactor of Trump administration policies. If, after America’s communities and grassroots speak, let the Trump administration explain to the 61% of Americans who support Ukraine why it has sided with 3% of Americans (and even fewer likely voters).
Few, if any, Americans want to see Russia’s flag marching around that stadium. But simply complaining about that in Congress is a surefire way to let the administration off the hook and make sure it happens.
The United States is an enormous country and, as the Democratic Party has proven time and again, one-size-fits-all political and policy solutions are ineffective at standing up to MAGA. That goes for politics, too. A 60/3 % issue, with momentum on the 60% side, and the sitting administration firmly invested in pushing the 3% position, is the kind of wedge issue political strategists dream of. But it will not simply evolve into one. The grassroots and our communities must force it to be one.
Failure to do so almost certainly means Russian flags marching in Los Angeles.
Dekleptocracy Journal is supported by Dekleptocracy Alliance, a Texas 501(c)(4), an investigative transparency activism fund that incubates independent transparency organizations that put corruption at the top of the US political agenda.
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