Ukraine’s Minister for Youth and Sport has accused the FIA of legitimising a war, insisting motorsport’s governing body had no grounds to readmit Russian and Belarusian competitors because the invasion that triggered their exclusion is still under way.
Matvii Bidnyi’s intervention follows the FIA World Motor Sport Council’s decision, taken at its meeting on 3 August and confirmed in a communication from the governing body’s legal office, to strike out the emergency measures imposed in March 2022. Russian and Belarusian drivers, national teams, individual competitors and officials are now free to enter international competition “without any restrictions” — including under their own flags, colours and anthems.
“The reasons why Russia was banned from international sports competition have not disappeared,” Bidnyi said. “Nothing changes and it became even worse. Russia continues full-scale aggression against Ukraine. Ukrainian people are still being killed every day.”
What the FIA actually changed
The 2022 measures were among the strictest in world sport. Competitors from both countries were required to sign a commitment to neutrality, banned from displaying national symbols and barred from entering under a national identity. Formula 1 terminated its Russian Grand Prix contract within weeks of the invasion, ending a run at Sochi that had begun in 2014 and killing off a planned switch to the Igora Drive circuit near St Petersburg.
The August ruling dismantles almost all of that framework:
- The neutrality declaration requirement is withdrawn
- National flags, colours and symbols may be displayed again
- National anthems may be played at FIA-sanctioned events
- Russian and Belarusian national teams may enter international and zone competitions
One restriction survives: the FIA continues to prohibit international competitions from being staged on Russian or Belarusian territory. The governing body also inserted a reversibility clause, stating it “continues to carefully monitor the events in Ukraine and reserves the right to take any further actions” required to remain compliant with applicable sanctions regimes.
The timing was not accidental. The International Olympic Committee, to which the FIA is affiliated as a recognised federation, lifted its own restrictions on 7 July. The FIA moved four weeks later.
Ukraine’s case against normalisation
Bidnyi’s objection is not procedural. His argument is that Russian elite sport is an arm of the state, and that restoring flags and anthems hands Moscow a platform it will use.
“In Russia, elite sport is deeply connected with the military and state propaganda system,” he said. “It’s one of the biggest whitewashing mechanisms. This is why we call it sportswashing.”
He framed each federation’s reversal as a discrete political act rather than an administrative tidy-up: “When any federation lifts the ban and makes steps towards the aggressor, the terrorist state, it’s really sad.”
The ministry’s own accounting underpins the position. Ukraine says 775 athletes and coaches have been killed since February 2022, and that more than 925 sports facilities have been destroyed — a figure that spans everything from municipal gyms to national training bases. Bidnyi has called on the FIA to reverse the decision immediately.
A sport-by-sport split, and what comes next
The FIA has not moved into consensus. It has moved into one side of a widening split. World Athletics has kept its ban in place, as has the international biathlon federation. In motorcycle racing, the FIM maintains a full exclusion of Russian and Belarusian competitors — meaning two-wheeled and four-wheeled world championships now operate under directly opposing rules. Judo and weightlifting, meanwhile, have already readmitted Russian athletes.
The practical effect in Formula 1 is limited in the short term. There is no Russian driver on the current grid, and no Russian race on the calendar, with the territorial ban ruling out a return. The consequences will surface first in the junior categories, karting and national championships that feed the FIA’s licensing pyramid — the machinery that decides who accumulates superlicence points, and therefore who is eligible for a seat later this decade.
That is the longer game Bidnyi is contesting. Restoring access to the pathway now determines who reaches the top of it in three or four years, and the reversibility clause the FIA wrote into its ruling offers little comfort to Kyiv when the trigger for reimposing measures has not been defined. The FIA has said it will keep monitoring events in Ukraine. Ukraine’s position is that those events already provide the answer.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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