Russia and Belarus remain barred from 2026 Winter Olympics, IOC confirms

While NHL players will return to the Olympics next February for the first time since 2014, it is looking more and more unlikely that Flyers winger Matvei Michkov will be among them.

Less than nine months before the start of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, the International Olympic Committee on Tuesday reaffirmed its policy barring Russian and Belarusian teams from participating. This means the Russian men’s and women’s hockey teams likely won’t be allowed at next year’s Games in Italy. Michkov and Washington Capitals star Alexander Ovechkin, the NHL’s all-time leading goal scorer, therefore wouldn’t play in the 2026 Olympics.

» READ MORE: IIHF decides Russia and Belarus will remain ineligible for international hockey tournaments in 2025-26

The International Ice Hockey Federation, which oversees global hockey, indicated late last week that Russia would not be able to participate in Milan because of the IOC’s continuing policy. The IIHF announced in February that Russia and Belarus would remain barred from international hockey tournaments in 2025-26, although the IOC has the final say when it comes to the Olympics. The IOC issued a statement Tuesday saying it would “build on” a policy it put in place for the 2024 Paris Summer Games.

In that decision, issued in March 2023, the IOC barred Russia and Belarus from the 2024 Olympics because of those countries’ roles in Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It did allow some athletes from those nations to compete as what it calls “individual neutral athletes” as long as they had not publicly supported Russia’s actions in Ukraine and had not served in the Russian or Belarusian military.

The IOC said in Tuesday’s statement that its executive board “will decide in due course the exact details for participation of AINs in Milano-Cortina.”

After not participating in the last two Winter Olympics, NHL players will play in Milan, without Michkov and his Russian teammates. The 20-year-old rookie, who tallied 26 goals and 63 points in 80 games for the Flyers this season, likely would have earned a spot on a star-studded Russian team that would have been expected to contend for a medal.

Those stars would have included the 39-year-old Ovechkin, who in April broke Wayne Gretzky’s career goals record, and others like Kirill Kaprizov, Nikita Kucherov, and Igor Shesterkin. Before the 2014 Olympics in Sochi — the most recent Winter Games in which the NHL allowed its players to participate — Ovechkin was the first Russian to carry the Olympic torch as it made its way from Greece toward his native country.

“When you [are] growing up as a kid [in the United States] or Canada, everybody [is] dreaming about Stanley Cups,” Ovechkin said then. “But in Russia, everybody [is] dreaming about [the] Olympics.”

Given his age, the ban likely means the end of Ovechkin’s Olympic hopes.

Recently, the International Skating Union, which oversees figure and speed skating, announced it will allow one Russian figure skater as an individual neutral in the men’s and women’s competitions in Milan. Each skater, and one designated alternate, can qualify for the Olympics at an event this fall in Beijing. Proposed pairs and ice dance teams from Russia did not pass the ISU’s screening process, the ISU announced.

The IOC also suspended the Russian Olympic Committee in October 2023 for its attempts to claim athletes in seized Ukrainian territories Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia as Russian, “a breach of the Olympic Charter” that “violates the territorial integrity” of Ukraine’s Olympic committee. That suspension has not been lifted.

In March, the IOC elected Zimbabwe’s Kirsty Coventry as its next president. Coventry succeeds Thomas Bach, who presided over the organization since 2013 and oversaw the current policy on Russia. She officially will take office on June 23.

Staff writer Gustav Elvin contributed to this article.