Russia rejoins Olympics — pro-war commentators call it a betrayal of territorial claims

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Russia’s Olympic win comes with a price for Putin

Moscow celebrated the Russian Olympic Committee’s restoration as a diplomatic victory. But the country’s pro-war commentators see it as a betrayal of territorial claims.

By DARIA ZAKHAROVA

This illustration incorporates an AFP photograph released by the press service of the 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, showing destroyed buildings in Kostyantynivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine, released Nov. 15, 2025.

Illustration by Natália Delgado/POLITICO

Nearly five years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin’s government has acknowledged the Donbas belongs to Ukraine — at least when it comes to the Olympics.

Earlier this month, the International Olympic Committee provisionally paved the way for the country’s return to the games by reinstating the previously suspended Russian Olympic Committee. “Viva! Common sense has prevailed!” wrote the Spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova (of no relation to the author) in response.

The National Olympic Committee of Ukraine filed an appeal on Wednesday with the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, hoping to overturn the ruling on the grounds that it “contradicts the provisions of the Olympic Charter.”

But while Russia has been trumpeting its big diplomatic win, and the IOC has drawn international ire for its decision, what Moscow quietly agreed to in order to achieve its victory garnered far less attention — a quiet renunciation of what Moscow claims as “sovereign territory.”

What lies behind the IOC’s reversal was confirmation that the Russian Olympic Committee “no longer includes as its members any regional sports organisations in territories falling under the jurisdiction of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine” — that means Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

A woman holds a sign with the text “Boycott Russian sport at the Olympics” during a march in memory of the hundreds of Ukrainian athletes killed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Paris on July 13, 2024. | Remon Haazen/Getty Images

These four territories of great economic, industrial and historic importance for President Putin have been a major sticking point in ending the war since Russia annexed them in 2022 in defiance of international law. And this concession made on the global stage is now turning into a domestic political scandal, drawing criticism from the country’s influential pro-war commentators who see it as a betrayal of the Kremlin’s territorial claims.

“The Russian Olympic Committee gave up part of the country’s territory just to live it up in style at the Olympics,” wrote famous pro-war journalist Dmitry Steshin — just one of many discontented voices.

‘Sabotage at a state level’

This is not the first clash between the Kremlin’s international sports ambitions and its influential military bloggers.

Russia’s attempts to send its athletes to the 2024 Olympics under neutral status — a restriction imposed by the IOC after 2023 — had similarly triggered widespread backlash, with the country’s pro-war commentators accusing authorities of “betraying national interests.”

But Moscow has treated sports as a crucial instrument of state prestige and soft power for decades, making Russia’s full return to the international competition a major political priority, said Ukraine’s former Greco-Roman wrestling champion Fevzi Mamutov, who left Crimea after its annexation in 2014.

Vladimir Putin visits a multifunctional sports complex of the Anatoly Rakhlin Olympic Reserve Sports School in St. Petersburg on April 27, 2026. | Gavriil Grigorov/AFP via Getty Images

“Since the USSR’s sporting success,” he told POLITICO, “medals, flags and anthems have been heavily integrated into Russian state propaganda.”

However, attending the Olympic Games requires Russia to make compromises to international organizations, while state propaganda has cultivated a growing number of ultra-patriotic influencers , who have become “part of the regime’s patriotic infrastructure” and will not stand for such concessions to take place.

“This is what sabotage and subversion at a state level can look like — especially given the current circumstances: the statement of our president and his press secretary, Kyiv burning two days in a row, enemy drones flying over Omsk. This is an act of collaboration with the enemy and anti-state subversion. It’s not the Russian Olympic Committee but a Committee of traitors,” wrote popular pro-war Telegram channel InfoWar.

Russian Sports Minister Mikhail Degtyarev, who spearheaded the negotiations with the IOC, has particularly become a target, with many blaming him for the “diplomatic failure.”

“So, the Russian Olympic Committee has confirmed in writing its refusal to support sports in Donetsk, Lughansk and Crimea? Then what is the much-hyped ‘victory’ point of Comrade Degtyarev?'” asked military blogger Dmitry Konanykhin in his Telegram channel. “Whose is Crimea, Degtyarev?” echoed popular pro-war Telegram channel “Verum Regnum.”

Degtyarev addressed the wave of discontent last week, saying the ROC had already dissolved all regional Olympic councils in 2024 — that nothing had actually changed. But the backlash suggests otherwise, and reflects the symbolic importance of the occupied territories to Russia’s wartime narrative.

“People living in Luhansk and Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are becoming our citizens. Forever,” Putin had said at the press conference marking the annexation of these territories in 2022. “And Russia will not betray them.”

For some, that’s exactly what Putin’s Olympic tradeoff has done.