The Russian Olympic Committee is challenging its suspension in mid-October by the International Olympic Committee to the sports justice system, which has the effect of depriving it of Olympic funding, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) announced on Monday.
The IOC thus intended to sanction the placement under the authority of the Russian body of sports organizations in the regions of Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia, located in eastern Ukraine occupied by the Russian army, recalls the CAS.
The Lausanne-based court has started “the exchange of written conclusions between the parties” and the constitution of the arbitration panel, but has not yet set a hearing date or deadline for resolving the dispute, it specifies. in a press release.
Meeting in Bombay on October 12 for its 141st session, the IOC had shaken up its agenda to react to the “unilateral decision” taken a week earlier by the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) to annex four Ukrainian sports organizations.
According to the Olympic organization, this Russian initiative constitutes a “violation of the territorial integrity of the Ukrainian national Olympic committee”, therefore of the Olympic Charter.
The suspension of the ROC was added to a range of sanctions taken by the IOC at the end of February 2022, just after the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army: ban on any international competition on Russian soil as well as in Belarus ally, and all the official symbols of the two countries on the fields and world podiums.
This new measure, however, has no consequences on the possible presence of Russian and Belarusian athletes under a neutral banner at the 2024 Paris Olympics as well as at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics, which will be decided by the IOC “at the appropriate time » and “closer to the Games”, the spokesperson for the Olympic body told the press.
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